31 January

Well, it wasn't a rout, but we didn't exactly cover ourselves in glory either, finishing safely above the half-way mark in the list of entrant teams. We easily thrashed the local MP's table, whose surprise late dash to first place last year provoked some mutterings, doubtless unfounded, from the more suspicious among us. If there's an event that beats the village fête produce and jam-making competitions for vicious competitiveness (I'm groping for an adjective that comes somewhere near the scope of the French acharné), it's the Mayor's annual charity quiz. Back of beer mat calculations suggest takings of well over £5000 for local MS and Cancer charities, and for a local residential home for people with learning disability. The management of the hall made it available free of charge, but gross profits from the bar must have been pretty respectable - a good £30 from our table alone, I'd say, and ours was but one of 56, not all of which were quite as well-behaved as our magisterial one.

The residential home I mention above has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons: two residents had had significant sums stolen from them by a senior member of the care staff, hence theft in the most appalling breach of trust. It didn't help in publicity terms that the culprit was the son of the director of the place. The court is reported to have heard stories of the defendant's depression (yes, a difficult illness) and low self-esteem (which in his case, seems to me to hit the nail deservedly on the head). Good job I wasn't chairing that court. Anyway, the home organised and ran the quiz (with a certain waspish authoritarianism, I thought), and provided a hefty ploughman's supper for participants, gathering the leftovers afterwards to feed to the chickens somewhere. Waste not, want not.

They'll be feeding their chickens; we'll be hoping to feed a wider range of birds today, since it's Big Garden Bird Watch time again. Readers of the old blog will remember how much joy we get from watching the visitors to our garden and bird tables. Educational too: blackbirds and thrushes; wrens and their cousins the dunnocks are all ground feeders, as are the wood pigeons, collar doves and the crow family. Robins and finches sometimes feed on the ground, but also come to the hanging feeders, as exclusively do the three or four varieties of tits that we see here, and the beautiful nuthatch, which always feeds upside down. Herons will empty your pond of fish at the drop of a long and pointed bill, and squirrels will eat anything, anywhere. So I'd better get some warm clothes on and get out and stock up the feeders!