The usual

My overseas Dad, who's been checking in here recently, is due thanks for sending me the new Greg Palast, 'Armed Madhouse', hot off the press. Thanks Dad- it's arrived safely and I'm the first kid on the block with this book :).

Still finishing Charles Palliser's The Unburied (A Victorian gothic thriller), but Palast's next on the list in my book pile. I picked up the Palliser novel from my Edinburgh parents' 'to return' shelf, and soon realised I'd probably passed it along last year before lazily failing to finish it. This time I've stuck through it- the first time I've made it through fiction for quite a time. Saving up the denouement for when I'm attending properly.

Kiddos and I have been preoccupied with the Beeb2 program 'Springwatch', with Bill Oddie. This week viewers across the land have, like us, been concerned about the welfare and future of 'Runty', a cult mascot and the smallest of a brood of blue tits. Miraculously, he fledged yesterday and was fed outside of the nest by his mother. Go, Runty.

Daily complaint:
Nini and I share outrage at a recent daytime TV finance advert featuring cartoon puffins, and outrageously showing them nesting on a cliff. This is just wrong. puffins nest in burrows on the crests of seacliffs, often in abandoned rabbit warrens. Anyone who's been watching Simon's ornithological reports on Springwatch from the Shetland Isles would know this.