At the end of our road is a duck-pond (one of four in the village) which has it’s own community of ducks. They’re never exactly afraid of cars at the best of times – one of the people on the road feeds them regularly, so it’s quite common to see a whole line of mallards crossing the road – but they’re even worse at the moment.
It’s breeding/hatching season, you see – so it’s not just all the mature adult ducks, but whole conglomerations of fresh-out ducklings too. And they’re even more food-focussed than the adults. Or maybe they’re just dafter, I’m not sure.
This morning, on leaving the house, I had to stop and wait for the whole line of feathered (OK, downy) fuckwits to cross the road before I could get on with my journey. I don’t mind really – it’s nice to see them plonking about – but it does make me wonder how many will actually survive through to adulthood.
In the last week, I’ve received three newly published books. For some reason, a lot of the authors I like (and regularly read/re-read) publish books at about the same time. In this case it’s not too bad, because I can save at least two for a couple of weeks ’til we’re on holiday.
As it is, I’ve bought (they were all on pre-order, but they’ve now been paid for, too) new books from:
- Quintin Jardine
- John Connolly
and
- Alastair Reynolds
Not bad going, over all. I’m looking forward to reading them while on holiday (well, I’ve started the Quintin Jardine already, but there we go) although it’ll then be back to waiting for their next ones.
