A happy Year of the Dog to all our readers!
I had several intelligent, witty subjects of conversation. However, due to appalling timekeeping, they will all have to wait for another day. Including a long, wistful description of various Spring Festival dinners I have known in far-off China (ignoring the fact that actually it was usually freezing cold and raining, and that conversation usually ran out about 2 hours before midnight, and when it's actually going on, people riding about on motorbikes with strings of firecrackers tied on the back aren't amusing, they are crazy and terrifying. Oh, and then there was the year when I was a student, and I got back to my dormitory to find there'd been a huge punch-up and half my friends were now terrified of the other half. And then there was the year I spent in a hotel with double pneumonia... ah, my salad days, they will never come again...)
All for another day. And the same goes for the review of Andrew Smith's Moon Dust (some interesting information, but written rather in the school of Gilderoy Lockhart, alas, alas), the Warrington-Dursley project and the my new box of Star Trek: Enterprise DVDs (squeeeeeeee!).
On the other hand, I just have time to tell that I saw about 50 redwings in the park this morning. They are small thrushes with red bits and the most gorgeous creamy eye-stripes. And this bunch were unusually tame - they let me get quite close. It was a charming spectacle - a whole field full of special birds. And then I saw a treecreeper! Weeks and weeks of boring urban birds - sparrows and gulls and pigeons - then two real sights in as many minutes! Not a bad start to the year, when you look at it like that.
Have a good one, folks.