A Varied Day.

The window on the stairs is perfect for bird watching in comfort. Just about every time I go past there is something to note. This morning a pair of chaffinches were investigating the bird feeder. The female is not so brightly marked as the male but has her own subtle charm.

Romas and I went into town this morning to get various things done including getting a student travel pass so that I can buy cheaper train tickets for his travels in the coming year. Next month he has an interview at Lancaster University which is over 300 miles away so I'm sending him up by train. There's no direct train so he's going to Leicester first to stay with Vytas and then to Lancaster the next day. The train fares will still be nearly £100 ! but it is for his future. Barnstaple station is now the end of the line but before the Beeching cuts the trains went to Bideford, Braunton and Lynton.

Here's the tacky Tarka Line train. There have been a lot of complaints about this train which is an old city shuttle on a rickety chassis that rocks and sways and is not really suitable for the 45 mins journey to Exeter.

I was thinking that the station car park was looking a lot bigger since the new road system had been installed when I realised that a whole road and railway bridge that went from the blue car on the right up to the new road behind the brown wall had completely GONE.

Tonight the tv was showing a celebrity cookery-type show which was mildly amusing when Pete started reminiscing about Linda Lusardi who was on the show. He recalls, from his days in the advertising industry how genuinely nice she was and how they had a long conversation about how women's' stomachs should be rounded and not flat as the media now tries to make us now believe. This lead to another anecdote from the time when he worked in the evenings as a stage hand for Raymond's Follies (this was more for fun than the money). Pete was rushing round a corner, bumped into a set and knocked himself senseless. He came to with a bevy of 8 stark naked (apart from glitter), ladies bending over him asking if he was alright. "Oh yes !" he replied despite the lump on his head.