Badgerstoke on Christmas

Badgerstoke on Christmas

I think it only right that I should write a few words to my many readers at this time of year. Maybe I’m even a little late in spreading my Christmas wisdom as some of the local Garden Centres have been selling Christmas decoration since September.

We have sent Christmas cards to everyone on our standard list. Mrs Badgerstoke is in charge of this duty and she takes the responsibility very seriously. Recipients are grouped into different levels. The top level is for close relations and friends, level two is neighbours and acquaintances, and level three is reserved for people we hate. There is a special group for people we don’t remember but who have sent us a card. We always get one or two cards from people we haven’t sent one to and we have a number of spare cards put to one side for an emergency last minute post.

For years we have exchanged cards with Alwin and Rolf in Bray and we have no idea who they are. I think they may have sent us a card by mistake years ago and we have exchanged cards ever since. However this year Rolf is missing from the card; maybe something has happened to him?

We have further subdivisions at each level for religious and non-religious people. My wife was worried about sending Mr Akram at the newsagents a card as be probably isn’t a Christian. However I pointed out that as he sold us the card in the first place then it should be alright. So we sent him a card with a robin on it and nobody can be offended by a small fluffy bird.

At this point I would like to point out to my many North American readers that the bird that you call a robin is not the same as the one we call a robin. Ours is cute and cuddly while yours is (like American cars) bigger than ours.

We have our normal artificial Christmas tree sitting in the corner of the lounge. This tree has done us good service for the last fifteen years. At the beginning of December I bring it down from the loft and put it together and put it in the garden for a couple of days to have a good “blow through”. An amount a sticky tape and string is now necessary to keep the thing in one piece but these are easily hidden behind a large amount of tinsel.

Mrs B (I sometimes call my wife this if I’m in a hurry) suggested we should have some outside lights like a number of our neighbours have started to do. I object to this as it was never a thing that was done in the past and it makes our street look like the Las Vegas strip (I have never been to Las Vegas before but I have seen the strip on TV in the comedy film Leaving Las Vegas).

Christmas is a time for families and this year my children will be home. We have two children, Brian and Gloria. Brian is nearing the end of his University degree in Modern Art with Media Studies and next year expects to take up a highly paid executive role. Gloria is a highly skilled hairdresser and lives with her husband Dean a short distance from us. Dean is currently on a Government scheme which has been preparing him for work for over a year now – he must be one of the most prepared people in the country.

Like most people we will spend the holiday eating too much and watching a lot of TV with such Christmas themes as suicide (It’s a Wonderful Life) and war (The Great Escape). Mrs B and I will watched the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day but Dean refuses to watch this as he always objects to listening to anyone who has been more successful in life than he has, which is most people.

Badgerstoke’s Tip:  Giving presents at Christmas is a good opportunity to dispose of things you got last year that you didn’t want.

Badgerstoke on Wildlife

Badgerstoke on Wildlife

At this time of year you should feed the wildlife in your garden. Mrs Badgerstoke is a great lover of wild birds (well the pretty ones anyway, she doesn’t like pigeons) and always makes sure she puts out food for them. Her friend Madge from the cake shop will save any stale produce and she gives half of this to my wife for our garden birds.

My wife puts out food in the garden every morning and I have noticed recently that if I go outside before she has done this there are lots of birds watching me for various vantage points. This is like a scene from a Hitchcock film I saw once; it was about birds but I can’t remember the title.

My wife also used to hang up containers of nuts for the more agile birds like the blue tit or green heron. However she found that these attracted a squirrel. Now I’m alright with squirrels but Mrs Badgerstoke doesn’t like them. She say that the way the constantly twitch their tails reminds her of her Great Aunt Sarah.

I never met my wife’s Great Aunt but she tells me that Great Aunt Sarah had a facial twitch which used to happen at the end of each sentence and some times in the middle of a sentence as well if the subject matter was exciting enough. Apparently she attributed this nervous twitch to the fact that she’s once been stranded for several hours during the London Blitz in an air raid shelter, in total darkness, with twenty American Airmen.

I have noticed that some of the birds in our garden are becoming quite fat and the pigeons in particular have a little trouble taking off at times. Under normal circumstances this might have been a problem for them but my wife has also taken to feeding the stay cat that frequents our garden and that has also has become a little overweight and has no chance of catching even the most obese pigeon.

I did buy my wife a book on identifying garden birds for Christmas a few years ago and she kept a log for a while on all the birds she saw in the garden. However when I caught sight of the entries once I told her that I was a little doubtful that she’d actually seen a puffin as they tended to live on sea cliffs and we were fifty miles from the sea and our garden is quite flat (the only part that might come close to being a sea cliff is a small rockery). She did admit that it may have been a crow but that she’d already recorded one of those and so she though a puffin would be nicer.

Badgerstoke’s Tip:  Even Garden Birds will turn their nose up at Marmite.