This is a photo of the swallow that haunted the shed in which we worked. He was very cute!
Ten points to Helen for getting a laptop!
That reminds me. I must recount a story of Helen and birds and a frightfully carrot-up-the-arse-sounding english woman, who coincidentally does seem to have a carrot up her arse. Although, come to think of it, it's more like she has a very angry racoon up her arse...
The story begins at the begining of 2006, our honours year. Helen and I happened to both be tutoring for the same course. The course was run by a particular staff member who nobody else in our department, apart from our head of school seems to like much. She is the lady in question, mentioned above. So as not to incriminate anyone, I shall refer to her in this story as 'Caroline' (Ha ha!).
Anyway, one day, Helen and I had to go and speak to 'Caroline' about how one of the practicals was going to be run. Neither of us wanted to attend this practical as it was one of the more shitty ones and it involved trapsing around a very large park ooo-ing and aah-ing at random birds that happened to fly past at the time - something about learning how to identify birds or some nonsense. Herein lies the root of the story, for Helen is hopeless at identifying birds. And, as part of her argument against attending the practical, she mentioned this to 'Caroline'. Upon hearing this, 'Caroline' recoiled in horror and insisted that Helen actually new much more than she thought.
'Caroline' then went on to explain to Helen how easy birding was. At this point I feel it is important to mention that Helen and I had gone to see 'Caroline' during our lunch break and had intended to go and buy spinach and feta pies from the theatre after our little chat with 'Caroline'. we had intended for our meeting to last only a short while - 5 min at the most. However, 'Caroline' had other plans.
"You see, birds are not as difficult as you might think," she said in her hot-potato-in-the-mouth british accent that just makes you want to slap her silly! "You can easily tell them apart. I mean, you know what a duck is, don't you? A duck is a duck is a duck. And you certainly can't confuse something like a weaver for anything else now can you? A weaver is clearly a weaver. Ostriches are so distinctive that there is no way of confusing them! An ostrich is an ostrich is an ostrich! And what about chickens! You certainly know what those look like and I'm confident that you will be able to point one of those out. And pigeons! Pigeons are SO easy to spot! I mean a pigeon is a pigeon, it can't be anything else! And doves are so common that you must know what a dove is! And geese are all over! A goose is a goose is a goose! Nobody can confuse those! And you know what a sparrow is. They are so easy to tell apart from the other birds. And, I mean, there is no way of confusing a peacock with anything else, now is there? And very few people can claim to be unable to identify a penguin. They are so distinctive! And all those birds of prey. An eagle is so clearly an eagle that it can't be confused for, say, a duck! After all, a duck is a duck is a duck..."
And so the very one-sided conversation continued until there was practically not a single kind of bird that had been forgotten, as if she was worried that the birds forgotten might find her and beat her up for making them feel left out! Eventually, we both, Helen and I, resorted to agreeing with everything that she said in the hopes that we might eventually get to go and actually eat something. Finally, after about 25min of bird speech, we were released to go and feed.
In the end we did attend the practical. We ran away after about 10min...
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