Dangers of an Idle Mind

We haven’t had a ‘silly Connecticut’ story in a while, and I can honestly say I have no idea why I didn’t write this up at the time. Our local sports team is the Bridgeport Bluefish , a non-affiliated, minor league baseball team. Their only real claim to fame is that their coach is a very renown former lefty pitcher whose deserved reputation was eclipsed by his eponymous surgery - one Tommy John . Anyway last summer, pre-teenage Spud and his oh-so-teenage brother were staying with us and so we decided an evening at the ballpark would be nice. Next to the ballpark is the Arena, a multi-purpose venue, and this particular evening the WWE was doing its sweaty man dance thing at the Arena while the Bluefish played the Lancaster Barnstormers. The car-park was more crowded than usual and as we pulled up to the orange vested lady at the gate she said: “Baseball or Arena?” “Baseball.” We said. “Three dollars” said the young lady. I don’t know if it was me, the boys or Christine who actually sa...

Some people exert that the word California means something along the lines of “place of milk & Honey.” I have just returned from a trip to Southern California and I ain’t so sure. The lifestyle does seem to be different to here in the Northeast or back in the Midwest. However, I’m not sure that life in Southern California is all that. The working life definitely seems not to be idyllic. I chatted with a bunch of locals during my stay and I found myself getting more and more surprised that anything is achieved in Southern California. This is mostly down to the compromises forced upon them by the traffic. The workday seems to go something like this: Get up early to avoid the traffic. Get stuck in traffic. Arrive at work and spend first hour moaning to co-workers about the traffic. Work for one hour. Go out to Starbucks. Work 30 minutes. Go to lunch early to avoid the queues. Come back to work, spend thirty minutes discussing lunch then thirty minutes discussing traffic at lunch. Do a...

I watched as the beautiful Green birds rose as one body from the end of the garden. Given that the fox conversation was still hanging over the breakfast table, I wasn’t about to start another fauna discussion. I excused myself and headed back upstairs. Once in the back bedroom I grabbed my camera phone and looked out into the garden for the second time that morning. Sure enough, in one of the trees that flank the garden were four green parrots. I snapped a bad picture (above) just to prove to myself that I wasn’t insane. Later, when everyone had gone out, I tried a little ‘twitching’ on the web. If parrots have established themselves in Surrey then surely it must be all over the news? Not exactly. I did, however, discover that the birds I had seen were Ring Neck Parakeets and one of the more colorful theories for how they come to be in the UK. Namely the assertion that the birds escaped from the film set of The African Queen while it was being filmed at Shepperton Studios in West Lond...

Seems foxes are really settling into the suburban lifestyle; even bringing into the well tempered gardens of Surrey the kind of behaviour that normally is reserved for behind the white patterned net curtains. Let me explain, just before Christmas I was in England, staying at my sister’s house in Surrey, I was very intrigued when one morning I opened the curtains and noticed a black object sat in the middle of her, otherwise blemish free, lawn. The object looked about eight inches long and a couple of inches across; it was a glossy wet from the morning dew. Over breakfast I mentioned the object to my bother-in-law. “It’s a fox.” he said. I peered out of the French windows at the black thing; prominent and obvious on the lawn. “No it’s not,” I said, “it looks like a kid’s training shoe.” “I know it’s a shoe,” said my brother-in-law, rolling his eyes at my sister as she entered the room and sat down, “The shoe was put there by the fox.” “What, a real fox?” I asked “Like Basil Brush or Fox...