Revolutionary Rants

Yesterday Chicken and I went to Tesco, which meant cycling along the river. We went along to Sonning first, and then back along, over the canal to Tesco. After our shop we headed home, only to see a Mandarin duck [see picture]! I haven’t seen one of these since I was a child, when there was a pair that lived on a park pond in Chesterfield, and - that I can recall - never one at all in the wild. There are lots of interesting birds on the Thames near us - including lots of herons and cormorants - but this was the best sighting I have made since the last adder that slivered past!

We have had a nice relaxing weekend, with lots of cycling, and rather too many trips to Tesco (due to our blender braking mid-cook!).

I was rather surprised to see Charles Kennedy in full election flow of ‘Morning With Frost Today’. Well, not surprised to see him on the show, but more that the usually quite empathetic and pleasant-seeming little man used the expected birth of his first child as an election ploy (even Tony Blair avoided stooping that low!!!). It was somewhat sad to see the politician who has just come out as the most ‘human and truthful’ leader of the three main parties in a poll of “the public” waxing lyrical about how being a father brought him in to a new level of empathy with the real people of Britain… But, he did bring things back slightly when he answered a question, which included a quote about himself being ‘a fully paid up member of the human race’, by saying he was sure ‘Tony was also’ but admitted mentioning the current Tory leader. Glorious.