Family day enjoying another birthday tea with my parents delivering my new fantail doves and us all enjoying recent videos Indian Sikhs retire to refugee camps and the violence subsides
A fair lay in reading The Sunday Times before a fine fried breakfast, which I thoroughly enjoyed as my Sunday treat. Quickly washed and dressed and then Daniel and his friend Paul helped me to clip the ducks wings one by one. They have recently completed their moults and have been flying out of the slipway and up and down the river, but not anymore. I resume reading the papers in the lounge until lunch at 1.00pm. A dish of meat and vegetables and Daniel discourteously identifies the meat as dry. Then soon after lunch my Mum and Dad arrived with two cases full of fantail doves.
We settle my parents into the lounge and then Dad and I went out to collect the doves from the car. We took them to the summer house and I tried handling them ready to take them out in the open air. Then very gingerly to carry the doves up the step ladder one by one and put them in the cage that I had assembled around the dove cote. First the hens and then the cocks. The hens are, one born in 1983, colour Grizzle (No. 83/4331) and the other two born in 1984, colour Blonde Qualmond (ring No. 83/4349) and Dilute Indigo (82/3969). The cocks are two born last year, both colour Dilute Indigo (No 82/3618 and 83/4336) and a 1984, colour blue (No 81/4000). The breeder, Mr J R Penley-Martin, an ex RAF flight lieutenant, had sorted out a selection of birds with shorter tails as these pedigree birds are really bred for show purposes and may suffer from getting wet tails. After a while they settled into their new home and began finding the nesting holes and their new partners as darkness fell. We then fell to a splendid tea and reminiscences and I filmed developments to complete my weekend birthday video. Eventually they set off home and I sat and caught up on these last two days journal. News tonight in India of the violence subsiding as normality begins to return. The Sikhs have gone to refugee camps in numbers after the horrific persecution by fire of the last few days. Back in England, as the UK politicians arrive home, there is a bomb scare at the Eastbourne CBI hotel venue as an empty tin is found under a bath. My chest infection is no better today and I am persuaded to seek a doctor’s consultation tomorrow. The weather today was clear but cold and we enjoyed an open fire in the lounge for the second day running. We sleep hoping that the doves can weather the temperatures of near zero on their first night out of their previous aviary shed.