Great crested grebe

It won't be very long before the grebes commence their annual courtship dance, but for the moment they're happy just fishing in the Ferry Meadows lakes. My walk was once again truncated by flooding, and now that all the berries have been eaten there are no waxwings and very few fieldfares or redwings to watch and photograph.

My walk provided a bit of rest and recovery after a somewhat trying day. When I came down at 6.20am it felt very cold, and I soon realised that there was something wrong with the boiler - the smell of electrical burning was a bit of a give away! Just after 9am I rang the company that service the boiler and they arranged for an engineer to come almost immediately - we hardly even had time to hoover! Fortunately it was only the pump that had gone, and it was all replaced and working again by 10.30am - what service :)

After that I took Ben to the orthodontist to have his brace fitted. He coped very well, considering that he was in the chair for nearly an hour. I think he must have non-standard teeth because the orthodontist took three attampts at every bracket! As is par for the course, he really hates them and has vowed to live on yoghurt for the next two and a half years. Alex got used to his fairly quickly, so I'm hoping Ben will prove equally adaptable!