More bird trouble. After the sad tale of The Crow a few months back, I had another reminder of man’s inhumanity to fowl today, when a bird flew into my office window.

            Deep in concentration on the computer, I was switching between roughing out a chapter of a book that may or may not be going somewhere, and over-competitively tackling an online spelling quiz, when the jarring ‘thud’ nearly gave me heart failure.

            There’s no sound quite like it. I knew before turning round that some poor bird had made the rookie error of mistaking the window of my house for more of the outside.

            I didn’t want to turn round and look. That would have meant facing up to a potentially fatal incident and I was doing so well on Hard Spell (which is a BBC children’s word challenge) that rushing to engage with the crisis outside would have threatened my record. And you can’t let those nine-year-old spelling geniuses get the better of you, can you?

            But it was hopeless. My concentration had been fatally punctured when that little beak made contact with the glass, so I hesitated online and came to grief on ‘paraphernalia’ which, in high-end junior spelling terms, is about as easy as they come.

Abandoning the quiz with reluctance, I swivelled round, and looked.

            The little bird wasn’t dead. It was crouching on the window-sill, hyperventilating. It was blinking a lot, too, perhaps the avian equivalent of slapping your forehead and saying ‘D’oh! I can’t believe I just did that - sheesh, hope nobody noticed!’

            Small, brown and quivery, I think the technical name for it is an LBJ - a Little Brown Job. My husband, pillar of the RSPB that he is, would have had it named in several languages by now, not that that would have done it much good. But he could probably have told me whether its cheep was sounding a bit off or not - as things were I was none the wiser whether it was a rattling death-cheep, a piercing cheep of pain or just a common-or-garden, full-out livid cheep.

            I’m no use at identifying birds, possessing a repertoire limited to the likes of robins, puffins and ducks. Oh, and crows. When my daughter pointed out a wee bird in the garden recently and said ‘look at the cute chaffinch!’ I was beyond impressed. Somebody, somewhere, had done something right with that girl and it hadn’t been me.

            Cautiously I stood up and approached the window. The unidentified little bird just sat there. This was not good news. Little birds should fly away when people approach. Its head seemed to be listing at a curious angle too. Concussion. I half-expected to see it perform a full Basil Fawlty faint - straight over, flat on its back, wee leggies in the air. (When I was doing my criminal court training, my fellow trainee Carol and I used to console ourselves that should things ever get really tricky whilst we were standing up in front of the judge, we could pull off the Basil Fawlty Faint - though probably only once in our careers. I’m still saving mine. Must track Carol down to find out if she’s used hers yet).

            Back to the bird. What to do? I could hardly open the window and talk it down off the sill. Meanwhile it was still staring lividly at me, one beady eye at a time. Its head looked as though it could swivel a full 360 degrees and I didn’t know if that was normal or not.

            “Sorry, little birdie!”

            An apology. Like that was going to do any good. And anyhow, wasn’t there contributory negligence on the part of the bird? But I really did say that. “Sorry, little birdie!”

            After a few more tense moments, the bird swivelled its head to look at me, blinked - or possibly winked, which is a far nicer thought - and flew away. I was glad, though still worried about residual damage: hairline fractures, whiplash, memory loss and the like. If it’s daft enough to do it again I’ll know there’s been some lasting harm done - though unless it’s a penguin next time, how will I know if it’s the same bird?

We are lazy about organising holidays. Life is so nice at home, for a start. The garden starts to come into its own around now, the weather’s kind and the children are being helpful - partly because they are wonderful but mostly because they have made that link between good behaviour and holiday treats.

            So, where to go? What to do? There are a few destinations on our wish-list which coincide, but mostly our discussions about where to grace with our presence for two weeks end up in sullen stalemate. We usually holiday in the UK and very nice it is too, but that doesn’t stop the annual tizzy about whether to go abroad or not.

            Me? Iceland or New York, thanks. The children? Egypt, to see the Pyramids. Or back to Menorca. My husband? Something hearty involving Pyrenees and bikes. There is so little common ground that we are always destined to be going down the compromise route that doesn’t suit any one of us 100%, but we never admit that until woefully late in the game.

            So off I hop onto the internet, and begin the first of a long series of doomed evenings trying to out-smart the holiday industry. I shudder to think how many times I have been round the world, online. Continued

As someone whose Gaelic knowledge stops after ‘Cheers!’, ‘Shut that door!’ and ‘Put your finger on your nose’, today ought to be interesting. I’m off to compile a pitch document for the proposed new Gaelic soap opera. Apparently many, many Earth pounds are being invested in the Gaelic channel and one of their goals is to start producing the next ‘Corrie’. After the dismal failure of the first one, ‘Machair’, confidence, and expectations, are low. Surely ripe pickings for my team of keen young things? Anna’s coming up from Dundee, David’s coming in from Argyll and Amanda, in the chair, will be hammering her flip chart - sadly not a euphemism. I expect to see Roses Lime Cordial and Fox’s Glacier fruits on the Highlands & Islands Enterprise table, at the very least. It’s hard not to think of Gaelic storylines without lapsing into cliche. Shall we have an old minister who’s dead set against change? But then, turning cliche on its head - the obvious alternative, and putting out a young hip (female?) minister is, in many ways, even more dull. Maybe we should take it a step further. Okay guys, listen up. It’s November. It’s cold. Even the minister has left town…