I'm beginning to think that wild bird food is one of the best value entertainment purchases around. In our old house, we had a bird feeder, but got a pitiful number and variety of birds visiting it, for reasons that still aren't particularly clear. In our new house, the situation is completely different, and we find it hard to keep up with the ravenous demands of the avian residents of our garden. Yesterday I was just gazing out of the window (something I've had the luxury of doing while on sick leave), delighting in the acrobatic show that the blue tits, great tits, coal tits, long tailed tits, house sparrows, blackbirds, robins and dunnocks were putting on. All of the trees and shrubs around our garden were alive with birds, and occasionally a blue tit would fly up to the guttering just above the window I was looking out of, flip upside down in midair, and cling on with its feet while pecking at insects, giving me a sidelong glance at the same time.

It's fantastic entertainment, and about a million times better than daytime TV.