The Vicar's Wife

The Queen is in the juniors now. This is a big thing because

1. The juniors is on a different site
2. The Engineer is in nursery which starts earlier than the infants, and at the infant site
3. So we have to leave twenty minutes before we used to last year
4. And we don’t cross with Mr Goldtooth any more.

This makes our mornings a little more stressed and a little less jolly. But the upside is the pigeons:

Our pigeons are fatter than this

I confess: I have encouraged my children to do something terrible on a regular basis.

Whenever they see the pigeons, they make big roaring noises and run at them, sending the pigeons up into the sky, or across the pavements, depending on how lazy the fat birds are feeling.

We see the pigeons nearly every morning, as local Asians, believing the birds to be reincarnated relatives, feed them daily on torn chappattis, bread, birdseed, rice and beans. Sadly, they don’t do this in their own gardens, but in the shopping precinct, which is then covered in bird poo, mouldy bird food, and later on, with rats picking up the leftovers. The instructions in English and Punjabi indicating that feeding the birds is against the law have no effect.

I’m not sure whether my kids roaring has any effect either, but it makes us all feel better.