Mid-February updates

Somewhere near Flagstaff

Writing, you may have noticed, has taken a back seat. This is not because the flow has slackened but because there has been no time and something has to give. The big news is that the major item on my to-do list miraculously resolved itself about two weeks ago. This was also the item that has caused me the most angst of any the things I set myself to accomplish, both now and with a previous version of the same thing in 2021. I will confess that I just did not have a clear idea of what to do, how to approach a seemingly intractable impasse and which combined with it being almost entirely out of my control made me very uncomfortable. I hate being powerless and the fact that it also had whole-life implications for one of my children made it especially unbearable. Somehow it came good though, and my long-honed emergency admin skills then came to the fore. It was less stressful than last time, no COVID and without quite the same time pressures, and to be fair I was ready and had the benefit of prior experience but nonetheless it was extremely nail-biting. But it is done, and irrevocably so. I got back from America on Wednesday. As before I can't quite believe it. 

I'm exhausted. The trouble with unplanned emegency galivanting is that it has to be fitted in around regular planned galivanting and other aspects of a busy life. I thought I did rather well to make my dinner date with Mrs L on Wednesday and the Marriage of Figaro afterwards, even if she did have to prod me awake a couple of times. But any time I might have dedicated to birding in Wanstead recently simply hasn't happened and my progress up the patch leaderboard has been glacial. Perhaps completely frozen. I am not overly concerned, it is a marathon and not a sprint, but those winter birds like Siskin and Woodcock might not be around for all that much longer. I've also not seen a Pochard yet..... A couple of short sessions should get me back on track though, even if a quick glance at my diary does not shed a vast amount of light on exactly when these might occur. We shall see.

For now I am in bonny Scotland again which is doing my Wanstead list no favours whatsoever. I am of course in Fife, however the weekend was mostly spent birding in Ayrshire which other than absurd levels of dog ownership has much to recommend it. Vast beaches for starters, and if you could find one that was not covered in dogs from dawn until dusk these would be sensational. More on this later as it does not fit with the chronology and I need to be very firm until I manage to get to Morocco. This is now on the near horizon as I am finished with Greece, however I am unable to publish it as my photos are in London and I am not yet technologically sophisticated enough to reside entirely in the cloud. Cloud cuckoo land perhaps....

Loch Lomond