for your amusement.

I thought I'd tell you about my day.

James has gone away for the weekend to France as he does every other year to watch the 24 hr race in le mans. so I'm home alone, and this morning I started hearing noises from the kitchen. Our flat is part of an old house with fireplaces in every room, the one in the kitchen we took out and blocked up when we moved in, for space and because it was a hideous 70's tiled affair, leaving only a 6in wide vent hole.

A bird had fallen down the chimney. (God I love my life. why does this happen when the man is away?)

I decided (40minutes before work) that I would have to pull the plug in the vent hole (James never actually put a vent in, just bunged the hole up - workmen and jobs at home n all that...) out so that the bird could come out into the kitchen and hopefully fly out the window.

So I sat for a while, watching this hole with the cats shut out of the kitchen, me shut in, and the window wide open. The bird had gone very quiet when I'd started moving around the room. Eventually, a JACKDAW hopped into the hole and started looking at me. Every time I moved it would go back into the hole in fright.

I suppose this was a sort of bizarre narnia to him. One minute you're sitting on a chimney pot, the next you're in a dark sooty hole, and then a 'door' opens, and you're in someones kitchen! Does that make me the white witch?

Anyway, I sat very still for a while, with a cushion in front of me for protection, and the bird and I looked at each other. I tried chucking bread in front of it to get it to come out, I tried hiding next to the hole so it couldn't see me. Nothing worked. By now I had 10 minutes til I had to start work (thank god for living in a small town) so I decided that I would have to leave for work with the kitchen window open, the door shut, and hope that the bird worked out what it was to do.

No such luck. It had solved half the problem, when I returned home 4 hours later, by leaving the hole in the chimney, and finding a perch on top of the curtain pole.

My immediate response was to call my Dad AGAIN and ask who one calls to remove crows from kitchens, at which point we embarked upon a ridiculous, needless conversation about whether it was a Jackdaw or a Crow, with my dad relaying between my mum and I.

In the end I decided I would have to go upstairs and get my neighbour to help me. He obliged by coming in, and poking it with a bamboo cane until it left its perch, and flew into the top shelf of a full height (10 ft) built in cupboard, where my Christmas decorations are kept.
More poking.
More flying, this time full pelt at the large window, and the lovely orchid my Mum got me for my birthday.
Then my neighbour managed to grab the Jackdaw (since we had decided that was what it was) and chuck it out the open window.

It then sat, rather dazed, in the back yard for about 20 minutes, until its mother/friend came down and started talking to it, and it seemed to wake up, and eventually fly off.

After which I resumed
a)sweeping up the soot it had propelled around the kitchen
b) taking cuttings from some plants out the front
c)looking for the cat
d) feeling rather rubbish/taking cold and flu tablets
e) went out for tapas.

Just another day in the life.