It's the time of year when I always feel beleaguered and this year it's worse than ever. In a couple of weeks the insurance policies expire on the house, its contents AND the car, all on the same day, and it feels as if every insurance company in Britain and a fair assortment of the insurance brokers as well are chasing me up for my business. I've had literally dozens of letters from companies plus many, many e-mails on the subject. Goodness knows how they learnt about the expiry date. Well, chums, the building and contents insurance is sorted and so you needn't chase me up about that. We'll look at the motoring insurance next week but I've enough latters and e-mails on the subject, thank you, all ready to reach an informed decision. No more please.

The last few weeks have been interesting to say the least, since the arrival in the neighbourhood of some new visitors who are proving unwelcome to many of the other residents. In early Spring we became aware of a lot of fuss around a tree virtually next to our garden. When we looked we discovered two Crows being mobbed by several pigeons. This surprised us because Crows are not normally seen around here and the pigeons tend to be quite laid back and little normally fusses them. This fuss and noise associated with the Crows has continued on virtually a daily basis and we have seen them being mobbed many times since then. They are still around - both were sitting on the eves of our house only yeasterday, so they have obviously decided to move into the neighbourhood. And all the other birds, not just the pigeons, are not happy about it. Nimrod the Mighty Hunter is showing interest too but the Crows so far seem to be avoiding standing on the ground, so he is just a bit frustrated.