Parakeets

I've gone almost cross-eyed today sorting out rounds for our music quiz on May 9th. I've learned how to use Garage Band just to splice the chosen tracks together. I'm marching along...

I took myself for a massage in the late afternoon to see if I could get my shoulder sorted out. Honestly, you get to my age and suddenly can't remember how it feels to not have some part of the skeletal system which isn't quite working properly! I'm told it only gets worse. Call the vet and pop me in a bin on your way home..:

My masseuse is called Peter, and he lives down the hill and through the wood, which is about as Enid Blyton as any description could get. The sad truth is that down the hill and through the wood takes a man from Highgate to the infamous Cranley Gardens, the erstwhile home of serial killer, Denis Nilsen, who dispatched about fifteen young gay men in the 70s and 80s when Highgate was a lawless frontier and there was no such thing as a hate crime against a gaybo!

Anyway, today the area looked exactly like the sort of place which ought to be down a hill and through a wood. The streets were lined with blossom trees and the houses were covered in lilac wisteria. I tried to convince Peter to vote Liberal Democrat. I'm not a natural liberal, but a constituency MP like Lynne Featherstone is utterly worth keeping. This is the woman who brought in the gay marriage bill, and is currently doing great things in the fight against FGM. More importantly she's also the woman who sorted out the fly-tipping in the alleyway behind my house, and bashed Haringey Council's multiple heads together when they mistakenly sent the bailiffs in!

Massaged, and light-headed, I came home and insisted that Nathan come up to the Heath with me to take advantage of the glorious last forty-five minutes of sunshine.

We sat in our favourite spot, which is up towards Kenwood in the huge field where the green parakeets hang out in large numbers. It's a beautiful place to sit whilst the sun sets and turns the parakeets into flitting emerald darts. We sat on a rug, and ate hummus, cream cheese and bread from the delicatessen at the top of Southwood Lane whilst dogs gambolled and skipped around us.