Tits on a Saturday - 07/12/06
A dreary wet Saturday morning, early, and I’m up with the girls to give my wife a well-deserved lie-in – the baby has been teething. I settle them in front of CBeebies (the father’s friend) then sit in the kitchen staring blankly out on our tiny garden through the large hole we punched through the back wall a year ago. We also fitted sliding glass doors. I’m suddenly cheered by the appearance of three blue tits; probably a cock, a hen and one of this year’s fledglings by the look of them.

The blue tit, parus caeruleus and its cousin the great tit, parus major, are frequent visitors to the garden, but it’s a treat to see three at once. Then they’re joined by a female blackbird which is taking advantage of the fact that the heavy rain has been bringing lots of earthworms to the surface of the lawn. It makes short work of three or four of the little wrigglers in as many minutes.

The tits dart around the shrubs and young trees, fig, magnolia, mallow, buddleia, olive, searching every crevice for invertebrates. They also take advantage of the feeders around the garden.

I’ve got a nest box up on the wall at the bottom of the garden but there have been no takers, though I saw a great tit poking its head in a couple of times last Spring. The neighbours had four bloody cats during the nesting season, though they seem to have got rid of two of them now. The cats probably spooked the tit.

I hate cats. When I holidayed on the Greek island of Symi a few years a go, the local kids shot the feral cats with air rifles, like the vermin they are; the cats, not the kids. That’s illegal in this country and I have to tell you that there is little prospect of the Protection of Animals Act 1911 being repealed; far from it. The new Animal Welfare Bill, making it even more naughty to be cruel to animals, comes into force next year.

That gives companion animals, as we must now call pets, more rights than, for example, humans caught up in our grisly and shameful asylum seekers system.

I finally got my own garden three years ago when a local population increase made the one bedroom flat I’d lived in on Ladbroke Grove for 20 years altogether too small. Now, we are the proud owners of 50% of an ex-council three-bedroom maisonette off Golborne Road, probably the best street in Notting Hill.

The great thing about the house is that it has back and front gardens so I’ve finally been able to become a gardener. I did have a small balcony on the Grove, but container gardening is not the same. Both my gardens look bleak and bare at this time of year, but next spring I’ll put up some photos and some gardening notes.

While we’re on the topic of Notting Hill property, I see that David Cameron’s new house still has scaffolding up. I heard it was supposed to be ready for November, so it’s comforting to see that being a top Tory doesn’t mean that the builders won’t shaft you.

And I see that the security services have told him he can’t have his wind turbine because it will make his home too easily identifiable to terrorists. Well, I know where he lives – cash offers only please.