It’s raining again. Thick grey clouds have shut out the Summer sun. And the world continues to feel like a very troubled place…… Covid 19. Racial prejudice…… Financial worries…… This is one of those days when I’m tempted to go and hide inside a dark cupboard! I guess that most of us have days like that. They tend to come along when we get stuck inside “the present.” A negative present. Humans have a great knack of making one another feel depressed, especially through their media and news stories. And sometimes it seems as though the world has forgotten how to laugh and smile. And when those thundery grey clouds bear down on us, we all need to look beyond the present to the future. And then

Every morning, my owner takes me across to see Nanna who lives in an annexe on the other side of the house. He helps her to get out of bed and get dressed, and then gives her some breakfast. And I usually sit on a door and offer some parrot supervision. But the other day, our little routine came to a shuddering halt. Because 94 year old Nanna let out a dreadful moan, and then collapsed into deep unconsciousness. Her face and mouth contorted into a strange shape. This was clearly more than a faint. And my owner immediately feared the worst…….. He quickly dialled “999.” And I listened in to the conversation that followed. “Is the patient conscious?” “No.” “Is the patient breathing?” “I’m not s

One of my happy pastimes is to read newspapers. Or at least, I do read them for a while until I eventually decide that it’s far more fun to chew them up. And so, one day last week, I found myself reading an edition of “The Parrot Times.” This reported on the human strife taking place in America. And it was a story which made me feel very, very sad. Because the story of humanity is rather like the story of the Earth…… In the beginning, there was one great continent called Pangea. It was a “super-continent.” Strong, unified and majestic. But over time, it started to split into two. And then these two parts, Eurasia and Gondwanaland, -they fragmented further. Up to the point where one original

Sometimes, things don’t work out in quite the way we had planned. Take, for example, this kitchen, where I spend a large part of my day. My owner’s wife likes it to be clean, tidy and clutter-free. But my owner grows lots of plants each year, and so between February and May, part of it’s invaded by a battalion of Triffids. Some big, some small, some common, some rare. But all of them invading her space until the last of the frosts have past outside. Now my owner has removed them all, and planted them in the garden. His wife is delighted! But so are countless pheasants, rabbits, and snails that have suddenly merged forces to move in for a tasty treat. And now it’s my owner’s turn to feel frus