Ink

I couldn't sleep last night. No idea why. Did all my usual stuff for sleep to no avail.

So I got up at 3 am.

Then I had a bright idea. I have never driven my new car in the dark yet. I might as well drive to the the postbox (I had some letters and postcards to post) and get a little practice in. There was something else I wanted to try as well. My new car is automatic, as was my last car. My last car was easy to keep at the 30 speed limit down the steep hill, but this new car was not. I was driving down the steep hill on my brakes to keep to the 30. But now we are 20mph my new car being on automatic I am driving the entire way down the steep hill on my brakes. I have only done it twice so far. So, I thought time to figure out the plus and minus sign on the D setting. My last car had a dedicated first and a dedicated second gear for steep hills and stuff, it was easy to use. This one you have to knock the drive setting to the right, and then knock it up (+) and knock it down (-) to get your gear. I found out it has 3 gears (useful), and a green light comes on when the car thinks you need to knock it up or down a gear. Green light was easy to see at night, not sure what it would be like in daytime.

I am driving up and down my steep hill in the dark before the rat run starts. And just in case I get stopped by police (which does happen) for loitering in the night (which happens, has happened), I have a bunch of letters and postcards on the passenger seat.

This shifting to manual is brilliant for going down the steep hill in 20 mph. I am now driving on my gears and do not need to use the brake once. So job well done, and I feel confident to do this when other cars are around now. I didn't have the courage to try something new in the daytime with other cars around speeding down the hill, all of them just using brakes, aall the way down. Presumably that is why some of them skid and end up in hedges or garden walls on the way down.


Yesterday I was sitting in my garden, looking at my sparrows feeding from the fatball feeders, when with no warning, and the sparrows did not have time to sound their alarm calls, through the tops of my trees and bushes at the speed of light, came a sparrowhawk who thought he was going to pluck a sparrow off the feeder while in flight. My sparrows slid up the heavily leaved branches, that I have surrounding the feeders, like greased lightning, and the sparrowhawk carried on his speedy flight, and left with nothing. It literally took a nano second. And if I hadn't been actually watching my sparrows I would not have known what happened right in front of me. It was so swift.

I was almost 100% certain the sparrowhawk had left with nothing. I waited for the sparrows to return, and they were all present and correct. Phew.

What I have done is cut some Buddleia down and temporarily made a canopy of branches and crisscrossing them so the sparrowhawk, I would assume could not plunge through. This canopy is over the bird feeders. I shall have to see.

I know it is a fact that larger birds have to prey on smaller birds/creatures to survive, but they are not doing it my garden. My garden my rules. This came about because we have buzzards (there is a lot of industry here and they hover for ages in the thermals, I think created by the steelworks and stuff), and they used to swoop on my cats. One buzzard took away one of my small cats from the potting shed roof. I saw it, and nothing I can do. I thought she had ended up being the buzzard's lunch. But a few days later she returned in a heck of a state, but still alive. The buzzard must have dropped her when it flew into the woods. And she was very neurotic after that experience. None of my cats slept on open roof spaces after that. I was traumatised watching it all happen in an instant from the window, inside my bungalow powerless to stop it.

Wild life camera.
Cat Midnight, watches Fox & Badger
60secs
https://youtu.be/36nL_pNyG60?si=1yUYDkvGPsdOeTYw


Creative is that black ink shapes in the white china cup again. I put it through an app called Tiny Planets and then some photo effects!

I think I have done a full day's work by now!

Going to make a fresh cuppa.

Have your best kind of day whatever life is throwing at you!