Hoopoe on the lawn

Am inch of rain last night and another forecast for today as an Atlantic depression chugs slowly through.

Good to have got all the cutting done in the last two days.

There is a small smudge on the far end of the lawn which was one of our local hoopoes gamely stabbing at the wet earth. They seem to appreciate the short vegetation.

I have 60 tomato, pepper, aubergine, cuke and melon plants waiting to leave the greenhouse. Always tricky to time the transplant right - a trade off between them becoming root bound, plantingbinto easily workable soil and the pounding that stair rod rain gives to plants raised inside.

I’m listening to Simon Schama’s compendious account of the French Revolution. I hadn’t realised that our word ‘privilege’ comes from privé legge - literally ‘outside the law’.

In the Ancien Régime it was asserted that feudal lords were not subject to tax on the grounds that they protected the king and his realm with their lives and the troops they raised.