My new YouTube channel

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 Here is my new YouTube channel. You can hear my stories about the wildlife we see all around us and hear me read chapters of my autobiographical novel 'It's not a boy!' about growing up in the 40s and 50s



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The dangers of living in the country

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I know that you might think that living in the country we do not get to see people very much. And it is true that I cannot walk out of my door and have a natter with a next door neighbour and I can’t just pop in to a cafe and catch up with friends who happen to be there. But you would be surprised how often I do meet up with friends – it’s just that you have to make more of an effort and it all has to be arranged and planned and when we do meet – we never stop taking – you see there is so much to say after only having our pets for company. Well, anyway, I am trying to tell you about what happened last night. Now the nights are drawing in we all agreed to meet up for an evening meal in our nearest town to cheer ourselves up. I offered to pick up a friend in a nearby village and drive to the nearest town miles away. What a good time we had catching up on news and ... well, just talking to a person and not a cat or bees or the like. But at the end of the evening I was dismayed to find tha
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Flying through the air in summer

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Here come the butterflies searching for flowers rich in nectar This is the Peacock with the Holly Blue butterfly They are back! Now the buddleias are in flower the butterflies are here to drink their nectar. I especially love seeing the beautiful red ones. There are whites too, of course, they have been here for some time. We don’t like the whites as much, because they lay eggs on our cabbage plants and, when their larvae hatch, they eat the leaves. But there is another ‘white’ butterfly that has just appeared. It is not quite white, in fact, this is the male and is very yellowy, the yellow of butter. I wonder if this where ‘butter-flies’ got their name. The female is harder to spot as she is a cream colour. I like them in the garden because they do not eat our cabbages, their caterpillars eat buckthorn leaves. Once you have seen them with their big yellow wings flopping around you will never mistake them for cabbage whites. There is something else flopping around our garden, but
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Bang, crash flash. It was not a thunderstorm but noises in my head as I gradually came back to consciousness. My operation was over and I slowly checked my senses I could hear the theatre nurse on my right, I could smell the disinfectant air, I could feel my fingers and I could see. But could I read? I remember when my mother had a brain operation (mine was not this) they asked her as she came round from anaesthetic, ‘Who is the Prime minister?’.  She knew it was Harold Wilson – not too difficult as he had quite a long stint in the job. But if they asked me the same question, I think that I could have been forgiven for not knowing because we have had so many different ones recently. In any case, my brain seemed to be working as I squinted to read a notice on the wall it said, ‘Quiet Please’, and of course all I wanted to do was to shout out in joy that it was all over. When I was waiting the long weeks before my operation, I read a poster telling me how to prepare. Lose weight (I a
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