Remember the Urban Spaceman? I’m the urban spaceman, baby; I’ve got speed I’ve got everything I need I’m the urban spaceman, baby; I can fly I’m a supersonic guy.
Yesterday I travelled 22 stops up the Piccadilly Line to meet a friend who promised a mystery tour. How mysterious. It took two bus rides to get to a lost palace.
The weather on Wednesday morning was inclement, nevertheless sixteen Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens gathered under the bandstand in Hyde Park. There was a high attrition level in my party.
An ornithological highlight in Ukraine was seeing cranes nesting beside the road. My Polish and German election observer partners weren’t impressed as they see plenty at home. I said I’d only seen one pair nesting in England and they are made of stainless steel.
I met Bali yesterday morning and we clicked. His owner has a problem with her Achilles‘ tendon and cannot take him for walks. As she lives only a few doors away I stepped into the breach.
Mhar Monastery was founded in 1619. We arrived on a crisp, sunny Saturday morning. The church was built in the 1680s, funded by two Cossack leaders, hetmans, one of whom is our old friend Mazeppa.
My grandfather thought that there were pine martens living on the thickly wooded banks of the Boyne at Oldbridge but I have never seen one of these shy creatures.
The title is an homage to William Boot’s column in The Beast (vide Scoop, Evelyn Waugh, 1933). Whether it is mild weather or competition from feeders in the cemetery, our avian amigos are not making their way, ‘feather footed through the plashy fen’, to the feeders in the back garden.