The Good Life

Chris has returned from Australia. He bought me a present. Not booze or fags or cheese but a packet of seeds. So now to find a sunny but sheltered spot of fertile soil to plant the courgettes....

Flight RSA003

I have alluded to our bathroom before. It is a lovely space. You can take a shower and see the bee-eaters circling overhead or the flaming sunset sky or the stars. The wall are embossed with a whale, dolphin and manta - and the fresh water is not exactly hot and not exactly cold.

But it does seem to have more than its fair share of wildlife. You are more than often being watched as you sit on the loo. Bill's brother ( you remember Bill ) has his vantage point in the middle of the whale opposite leaping down to pick off the toiling ants ahead of the cicaks. The ants come in about 4 different sizes and only the really minuscule ones bite. I am often humming that old blue eyes number "High Hopes" as I watch in awe and amazement as these little creatures tidy up all their dead cousins and other detritus that they find.

Some of our visitors only stay for a night or two and we are perfectly happy for them to do so. This was a rather fine guest a few days ago.

Others are encouraged to leave. We now charter BTH > GDN flights. RSA001 was a snail, nothing wrong with him just in the wrong place. RSA002 was something I'd rather not say; looked very similar the long antennaed, brown beetley grasshopper things but with a rather strong resemblance to a cockroach. We found him in the bedroom, he was at least dead and the ants were tidying him up but not fast enough for my liking.

The night's passenger on RSA003 was a very long worm who must have been washed in during the prolonged afternoon's rain and was just inching his way too close for comfort. It's not that I'm particularly squeamish - good god I can't afford to be or I wouldn't stand 5 minutes here - but worms, eurghh!!

Then we found a late arrival - must have been in the bar or shopping or having his last smoke or wherever those "final call" bods disappear to at take off time - a rather fine frog. Not entirely sure how these find their way in to BTH as the wall is a good 6 feet high. So he was fast tracked by hand to HDG (Adrian thinks he's going to get warts now but I think you only get them from toads). However he jetted back in after a spell in the wars so has now been deported straight to GDN over BKW, with extreme prejudice.