I am mystified by our swallows. Two nests, two broods. Both broods seem to have fledged.
And yet, I have not seen anything of the young ones since. Usually, they’d be very obviously in and out of the nest site, often sitting in a row on a roof beam waiting for the parents to feed them.
The adults are still very much in evidence, and presumably will be gearing up for second broods.
I’ve no idea what has happened.
I haven’t actually checked, but I think my posts here have become more sporadic. Haven’t felt like I have much to say right now so the perennial voice in the background that asks ‘what’s the point?’ has felt louder. In reality I know that at this time of year fatigue is a big player – hayfever and a busy time at work combine to cumulative effect.
However, I’m not going to abandon the blog. Instead, I am going to re-evaluate my approach to it and perhaps do things a little differently. Or I may continue on as I am. Who knows?
A friend stepped back from their blog earlier this week. And a post from [Sameer Vasta](https://www.inthemargins.ca/) has popped up in my RSS app announcing that he his effectively closing his blog down after 25 years.
Is there something in the air? No. Just the ebb and flow of life. Nothing is permanent. But that does mean new things appear in the footsteps of the old. And my blog is supposed to evolve, not be a finished product. I hope I can find a better way to write.
All I wanted was a nasal spray for hayfever. I’d read on patient. info that other than over-the-counter steroid sprays all others require a prescription. I used AskMyGP to request a prescription.
I assumed this would be a straightforward process.I won’t go into *all* the details. Suffice to say that I found myself caught up in a new system that seems to outsource some of a GP’s traditional work to local pharmacists.
The system was having teething problems.
I’m sorry, I’m going to have to put you on hold’
I’m just going to check this with a colleague’
I am sorry, I’m going to have to put you on hold again because this computer isn’t showing the right information. I need to switch to another machine’
A pharmacist did ring me in the end. Told me that what is available are all over-the-counter products and don’t require a prescription.
Which is not where I was expecting this to take me.
I just hope that people with serious issues get the help they need without being bounced around by a process that is probably meant to be efficient. Or more cost effective. Or to make the end user experience more pleasant.
Well, having broken my blog and then spent a while fixing it I think I’m back where I started. Everything is working as before; right through to the deploy being triggered on Render, but as before, the new post that should be showing doesn’t, until I do a manual deploy.
*scratches head*
Having been bending my brain over this for a few days, I’m going to leave it as it is for now. In the meantime I will consider my options. Again.
Sad to see Julee Cruise has died. I’m not familiar with her work other than appearing on Hybrid’s outstanding 1999 debut album, Wide Angle. An album that still stands up today, and will always be a classic for me.
Hmm. Having transferred the blog from Netlify to Render, the result is a resounding failure . If a deploy fails on Netlify, a manual retry usually works. Not so with Render.
If you are reading this then clearly the problem has been resolved, which probably means, at least in the short term that I’m using GitHub Pages.
This suggests there is a problem with my Hugo build, so if I want to persist with Hugo in the long term I probably need to rebuild it on the Pi.
I’ve moved the blog site over to Render. A very straightforward process, and I hope it works out. I’m sure, with a bit of digging, I could have got to the bottom of the problem I was experiencing with Netlify, and was most likely user error. You know, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing kind of scenario.
Went outside about 6:30 this morning and realised the blue tits were fledging. Much calling and coaxing from the parents, at least a couple young in the walnut tree and another peeping out of the nest box.
Told my wife and by the time we went to look a few minutes later they were all gone. We’ve noticed this before – they really don’t hang around. With various magpies and jackdaws hanging around on the chance of a tasty breakfast, it’s not surprising.
The pair of robins for whom our garden is their territory (policed with considerable violence at times, in contrast to the benign greetings card image often portrayed), successfully raised a couple of chicks about a month ago. Up until a last week, the parents were still feeding the fledglings in the garden. As a result all four family members became increasingly bold around us.
The youngsters seem to have moved on now, but the parents remain, and are still very bold, the female in particular. She will come very close to us to get food that we put down. Yesterday she even came into the kitchen as if to demand some food!
The blue tit chicks must be nearly ready to fledge. A quick check with the camera yesterday and all seven look to be present and correct. I expect they’ll fly this week.
Haven’t seen the whitethroat for about a week now.
The blackbirds are building another nest beyond the garden as I watched the female gathering great bundles of moss or grass from our lawn.
Our resident pair of wood pigeons, who we have named Kylie and Jason, are currently building one of their structurally unsound nest-things in our walnut tree. Will they never get any better at it?
Having a holiday is great. Immediately launching back into everyday hustle and bustle, without taking proper care to manage sleep needs, overwhelm and anxiety is not so great. As [I learnt to my detriment](https://strandlines.blog/2022/05/22/overload/).
Trouble is, I am prone to think that when I’m rested and energised, I can then put my foot to the floor and achieve all sorts of shit. Which may well be the case – for a short while.
Part of the problem is that anxiety sticks it’s oar in. It has a way of telling you to keep going, just keep doing SOMETHING. What exactly, is not so relevant, just anything that gives you the feeling that you are working to resolve those perpetually cascading problems that anxiety generates.
The problem solving capabilities of the human brain are an evolutionary success. But with unhealthy levels of anxiety tossed into the mix it becomes a pretty toxic recipe. An endless cycle of ‘what ifs’, then coming up with a solution, only to have another ‘but, what if …?’ pop up for our attention.