pumpkinstrokemarrow

While walking back from Heddon's Mouth last week we came across a dead fish on the path, maybe a foot long and partially eaten. Presumably a salt water fish as one would not have thought that the Heddon would support a fish of this size, certainly not this stretch of it. We also thought that maybe an otter had taken or found it, got tired of it or was disturbed and so dumped it on the path. Not the sort of thing that a walker on a Premier League National Trust Beauty Spot was likely to discard.

Then this morning, back home, for the first time I saw a pretty fox. That is to say it looked healthy with a handsome brown coat and a black tipped tail, not at all like the rather mangy things we have had hitherto. Presumably one of this season's crop, fed up by one or other of our carnivore loving neighbours.

It was on the back lawn, poking around rather disdainfully at a dead bird, maybe a blackbird. After a bit it wandered off and a magpie came down for his go, seemingly not in the least bothered by the fox in the vicinity. Maybe it, or its genes, knew that a fox walking away from a dead blackbird was unlikely to bother with a live magpie: I believe antelopes have this sort of intelligence about lions. In any event, the magpie had a more serious go at the bird than the fox. Maybe beaks better than canines for this particular stage of the proceedings.

By the time I got down to the lawn, the bird had vanished and I presumed that either the fox or the magpie had carried it off for private consumption.

Back in the kitchen squeamish enough to take the breakfast sardines from a tin with neither skin nor bone. Which turned out to be a mistake as they were a bit bland; no bite to them. So back to skin and bone next time, perhaps not Sainsbury's Basics, and hope that we do not hit another crunchy batch (of which we have had two so far).

PS: Chrome playing up again. Reduced to using Internet Explorer to get Dialachemist to work, FIL's gluten free bread stocks approaching critical. In Chrome, you could get the page up from the Google search results page and more of it up if one asked for the site direct. But neither way did the site work. No such problems with the rival product, despite it offering to remember my passwords - which I do not like - at all points.