Oh - No Dragons

I had a quick look in the garden today for dragons, but could not find any, no doubt they are all out celebrating St George's Day; there are no roses flowering in my garden either.

Today you have a female Reed Bunting and a female Blackcap, feeding on the fat balls. Until this year, these birds had not been seen in the garden although a pair of Blackcaps did nest here two years ago. This year, these as well as some Lesser Red Polls are frequent visitors to our feeders and garden.

I had two telephone interviews scheduled for this morning to tutor on two new modules for the Open University. The first one at 1000 hours went okay although it was clear to them how nervous I was. The second one was scheduled for 1100 hours, but the phone did not ring. At 1108 hours I telephoned the OU on my mobile and discovered that they had been trying to contact me on my main line telephone and when that failed on my mobile. I had switched off my mobile so that I did not get any interruptions! They tried ringing again on the main line telephone and the interview went ahead.

At 1230 hours, when I was catching up with the final episode of 'Broadchurch' on iPlayer, our broadband and telephone service went dead! I reported it and was told that it would probably be five days before it was reconnected and that there were no faults on the line.

Mr A, during one of his brief waking periods, being 'ex Post Office Telecommunications' trained had checked all our connections and knew it was a fault outside. He walked up the lane to find that workmen were replacing a telegraph pole, but no one had bothered to tell us or the other two properties on the line! It seems at around 1100 hours, they disconnected the line only to discover that the pole was the wrong length, so they reconnected the supply while they went off to get the correct one and then disconnected it again at 1230 hours to replace the pole; the service was restored during the afternoon!