In an effort to do a bit more writing and posting here, I thought I’d have a go at the ‘Week Notes’ format. Each week, just writing about interesting bits from the past week. Let’s get stuck in!

The week kicked off with a visit to St. James’s Park to do a bit of birding. It was the first time I was really out and about since before Christmas. I had myself a chest infection that was very determined to stick around for a long time. The pink backed pelican pictured above was, of course, spotted in the Park.

This year I’m having a go at using the Cornell Labs eBird app for tracking what I see and where (Liz is still sticking to a spreadsheet – part of birding that gets me interested is what tech I can use with it). As a lot of the birds in St. James’s Park are considered captive, they don’t count on the app. So the species count was 22 that were available to log on the app, and 29 in total.

I’m not the only household member in poor health. Frank had a trip to the vet after we spotted him scratching a patch of skin on his arm to the point of it bleeding. Thankfully there were no major issues and the ointment we’ve been applying to his bad patch has helped immensely.

However, Frank is very not on board with the Cone of Shame he has to wear to keep him for cleaning off that helpful ointment. Just one more day of the cone left and then he’s free!

This grey and often times rainy week was wrapped up with a visit to Down House, the home of Charles Darwin and his family, with Liz and a friend of ours. It was quite busy with lots of others looking to do something indoors while the heavens opened up outside. Our friend manages a museum that is housed in an historic building and it was interesting to have her pointing out bits for conservation and even pest/insect control. Less interesting was the older chap we kept trying to avoid who was trying to ‘outsmart’ all of the information presented 😬

Mundane mid-week event, got a sharp hair cut from the always delightful Open Barbers.

As for media and entertainment this week, I’ve been reading the book The Crystal Palace Chronicles: Star of Nimrod. Written by a Crystal Palace local, as it involves time travel, there’s a lot of local history in int that is super interesting. Now I’m trying to find what little info there is out there on Norwood New Town, an area of housing built for the workers who rebuilt the Crystal Palace in the 1850s.

Over Christmas both Liz and I started up new farms in Stardew Valley. She’s playing on the Switch and I’m on the Steamdeck. That’s been taking up a lot of chill time, though I’ve also been playing some Xmas purchases as well – Lego Marvel Super Heroes and NBA2K3 (with cover star Devin Booker 🙌🏻).