So good they named it again

You thought I was done didn't you? No, no, no, plenty more where they came from. Bird blog? Who said that? I do sometimes feel a tad guilty that increasingly many posts have absolutely nothing to do with birds. Wanstead Birder - kind of gives the impression that birds might be involved. So, if you feel cheated, especially by the Speedo modelling, I can only apologise and say that July is just around the corner. Come on though, who genuinely thought that by scrolling down that they would actually get some "banana hammock" action? (many thanks to regular reader Laurel for introducing me to this quite fantastic expression). All I can say is that the chances of me posing in Speedos but without the Jeans were always very close to nil. That was a one-off, dedicated to the people of France and their utterly ridiculous and spurious rules. And boy do the French love their rules. I've lived in France in the past, and the mere act of trying to live, trying to have a telephone and electricity for example, are enough to drive you mad. It is the most beaurocratic place I have ever been, and it's all Napoleon's fault. Still. Before I get too carried away, and remembering that there is always the possibility that I may have some lovely French readers, let us skip gaily across the Atlantic and get NY over and done with.

New York is a quite wonderful place if you can cope with the excess consumerism and monumetal amount of waste that only a very few people generate. Excuse me if I just go off on one again. My family of five generates one 30L bin's worth of rubbish per week, if that, and one to two boxes of recycling (lately growing due to my increasing wine addiction). That's the same amount of waste generated by the average New Yorker's lunch. It is enough to make you sick quite how much is thrown away. The City is not dirty, far from it, but the level of consumption is simply unbelievable. Everything comes in a bag, bottle or can. You buy food, it comes wrapped in yards of paper and will have a styrofoam tray, accompanied with an armful of napkins. They could build the Brooklyn Bridge every day out of used coffee cups. It doesn't help of course that the portions are gigantic, something I definitely didn't take advantage of.....