old habits

It's good having a laptop that can hold a charge for an hour or two.  Even better for the Systems Administrator than me, since when I was sitting at the kitchen table reading The Telegraph on line with my breakfast, it was the SA who had to step over the power cable to get to the sink.  It didn't make much of a difference to me whether the machine was plugged in or not, apart from the times when I needed to print, or the jack plug came loose without my noticing.

In fact it's proving hard to shake off the habit of taking the power cable with me each time I transfer operations from the sofa to the table or back again.  I am so used to pulling the plug out at the sitting room end, looping up the cable and plugging in again in the kitchen, I forget that I don't need to do that, now the battery is fully conditioned and I can leave the laptop plugged in on the hearthrug to top up when I'm not using it.  When I studied biology at school, rather a long time ago, one of the things we learned about was a little, forest dwelling mouse.  It had its regular tracks around the forest floor, and when it came to a twig across its tiny path it would jump over it.  If you removed the twig, when the mouse came to the place where the twig used to be, it would still jump. I laughed at that mouse, aged fifteen, but I don't now.  I know how it felt.

In the front garden this afternoon a baby bird appeared, looking like a large duckling on stilts.  The SA asked me what on earth that was, I don't know why since the SA normally is a far better ornithologist than I was.  Looking at the baby's large, long toed but not webbed feet, I opined that it was a young moorhen.  How it got to the front garden is a mystery.  They live down on the farm reservoir, but not normally in our garden.  Perhaps it wandered along the ditch, and up through the wood.  That seems more likely than that it marched up the lane from the farmyard.  Shortly before it appeared, the SA had put up the temporary netting barriers we use to discourage the chickens from disappearing along the side of the wood when they are let out for chicken exercise time, so maybe the moorhen found itself on the wrong side of the gate.

The black cat suddenly noticed it, and began to advance towards it with a determined expression and slightly unsteady gait.  He used to be a competent hunter in his younger days, before he broke his leg, but has mostly given up in the last couple of years.  The sight of a giant baby bird running around in broad daylight right in front of his eyes must have brought back old memories and desires.  I scooped him up, took him inside, and distracted him with the second half of a pouch of Sheba left over from lunchtime, and the moorhen swiftly took cover in a jungle of euphorbias and lavender and disappeared.  The cats are all inside now, lying down, so it will have to sort itself out. Let us hope it does not meet Black and White Alsatian Killer, otherwise I'm afraid it's toast.