Reality check - pinch me if I'm dreaming

We finally cleared the new house of tools and rubbish last night prior to the carpet fitter arriving this morning. We now have painted bedrooms, all the light fittings and curtain rails. I am just about to load my car with all the stuff I need to clean windows, wipe down doors and paintwork and hang curtains. After 16 months it barely seems real. My stallwort friend and lifesaver T is arriving later to help. What I would have done this last twelve months without her support I do not know. OK she started as the 'hired help' but as in all the best stories she's now a part of the family and a great friend to boot.

My other 'dream' scenario is my energy level. Over the weekend I moved a lot of bricks and some builders sand which I was sick of seeing. Since then I have cleaned as though my life depended on it. I keep waiting for the crash and it doesn't come. Even 6 months ago I could not have done all this, so now I am testing myself daily to see how much more I can do. The results are amazing not just me but everyone around. For this I have to thank my Lovely Lyme Doc and his faith in my treatment.

And just to put the icing on the cake of this upbeat post, the nightingale has arrived and is singing not 20 metres from my window. What a joy.

A trio of birds and some badgers.

It's getting really wild around here and I don't just mean the weather. Last night I saw the local badgers nosing round my car again. I had heard from a neighbour that they were back again, her pampas grass had disappeared overnight and was trailed across her garden and round past the shed to hole in the stream bank 10m away. I haven't seen them for about 18 months but obviously that set is still in use. I'll have to try and get up about 2am again tonight to watch them although I was going to get some sugar puffs to put out for them but I forgot. I'm hoping the sugar puffs might lure them slightly more into the light away from the garage wall so they can be seen more easily.

Another oddity is that after going nightingale watching several evenings recently, the last time with the grandkids in tow as well, we now have a resident one at the bottom of our road camped out in a huge fir tree. I have lived here for 23 years and the birds here generally have vastly increased in numbers but I have never heard a nightingale here at home until now. Middle daughter and I spotted him on Sunday through the binoculars although he has been around since last Thursday. All that fuss to drive a couple of miles to go and listen to one and I can lie in bed at 5am and hear one plain as anything.

We have a strange jackdaw too. These have been increasing year on year and last year we had one with a distinctly craoky off-key voice. He seems to have returned again, or maybe he was silent all winter, so now we get this strange almost honking noise from about 7am. I know it IS a jackdaw as I have watched him through the bins too.

The third 'new' bird are flycatchers who sit on the telephone wires at the back of the house and then do a lovely tumbling display catching their next meal. They appear to be nesting in the eaves of a house in that direction and though I have looked for the fledglings I haven't seen any yet.

Either this spring is distinctly odd or else this village has suddenly become a magnet for a great influx of wild life.

Concerto for nightingale and blackbird

WH finally picked up his new hearing aids earlier this week. The difference to him is immense. He can't believe just how many little things he can now hear again. Perhaps a rowdy children's party was not quite the best place to wear them for the first time but he didn't need to remove them or turn the volume down and no-one noticed he was wearing them until pointed out to them. All in all they seem to be a success.

Later that same evening we went to look at a small parcel of land which is for sale locally. Mostly mixed woodland, there are some redundant buildings and a pasture which floods in winter, a haven for local wildlife. We soon realised that buying this would not be the dream we had thought it might be, noise from the motorway some 7 miles distant seemed to funnel up the valley and broke through the silence. A minor road above the fields also echoed loudly and WH with his newly acquired hearing deemed it far too noisy.

Nevertheless we walked the pathways and and enjoyed the warm evening listening to the numerous local birds, joined by a brace of pheasants who were roosting in some rhododendron bushes. As dusk fell another tune began. Two nightingales in adjacent trees struck up a conversation and sang their sweet song in the falling light. We stayed the best part of an hour listening to them until we were forced to leave, driven by the falling light and the need to negotiate some rough ground in poor light.

It had been a magical hour, the stillness, the unspoilt ground and the amazing song of the unseen birds. WH told me that he had not heard sounds like that for the best part of 20 years. I was stunned and momentarily felt empty as the realisation of all that he had had missed hit me like a thunderbolt. At least with his new aids he can begin to make up for that loss. Then as if to celebrate two blackbirds joined in and the road noise was obliterated as we left the site to a finale played by a quartet of the loudest birds even I had ever heard.

Listen here for the sound of the nightingale. Click the forward arrow above the waveform to play.