The Clockmaker

Expensive morning. My poor baby was taken in for emergency surgery on a broken arm - the baby in question being my adored car, by the way, and the arm in question being a front offside suspension swinging arm. How do you break your suspension and not notice? I mean, it's bad enough that I succeeded in breaking it in the first place, but to not know I'd done it?!

So I spent a few hours shopping. I have acquired two more big soft oversized men's shirts which are just brilliant for throwing over a t-shirt as a lightweight but warm extra layer, particularly when I'm travelling in chilly countries, like Lithuania in March or prowling the Arctic Circle in May... My sister is quite a bit disgusted by my taste but I like them. And besides, her taste in clothes tends to consist of a lot of visible flesh, which I really don't do. Except feet. There's a very pretty pair of trekking sandals in this months TGO magazine, red neoprene-lined Merrels which are gorgeous... and very much like my current trekking sandals which are blue-grey and still in very good condition and not in need of replacement. I fail at Being A Girl.

I have also acquired a bottle of Piriton. Not for summer allergies, because I don't have them but for emergency inability to sleep, for example when the sun doesn't set all night in Norway, or when the hotel is so noisy that I'm still awake at 6am crying from tiredness and frustration and subsequently getting mistaken for a drug addict when I venture outside again (this happened about this time last year) or when I'm in London. I don't think I have ever managed to sleep in London. The only thing is that I'm a little nervous that my brain will start pleading for the stuff the moment I get into bed tonight because it knows it's in the house and so on and so on. They keep Piriton behind the counter in chemists, so you have to ask for it. This was something of a major obstacle for me.But they didn't ask any questions or offer alternative suggestions.

The MOT took an hour longer than planned because of the unexpected surgery so I spent quite a while sitting in a park, watching the birds. Swans are massive when they're scrapping in mid-air just above the surface of the stream and they make a lot of noise with their massive flappy wings. There's a bridge having some major work done to it and they've attempted to block the stream underneath with sandbags and then some big tubes to let the water flow through. But six ducklings have got over the sandbags and ended up in the stream under the bridge. The water level is a foot lower there and they can't get back over the bags. Mummy Duck can get between the real stream and this enclosed bit of stream and she keeps popping over to see them but when I left, I think they were all beginning to get a bit upset. All the ducklings were making a constant sad peeping noise and jumping at the bags before drifting off a bit to have a splash and then try again and Mummy Duck had got all the boy ducks in the area to come and see. And there's nothing I can do to help. I can't climb down the wall into the river six feet below and lift them over. I can't find a big plank anywhere to make a bridge. I phoned the RSPB but their automatic switchboard said "If you have an injured or sick bird, please be aware the RSPB is not a welfare charity and can only offer limited advice." I've seen several men from the council observing the stranded ducklings so I hope they'll be rescued. Otherwise they're going to have to grow up in that enclosed spot until they're big enough to fly out like Mummy does. Or perhaps go to the other end of the blockage where I don't think the dam is so high. They'll be ok, I think. But it's not nice leaving them stranded.