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Isn’t it beautiful? Carduelis carduelis – the European Goldfinch.
We have dozens of them in the garden. The collective noun is a charm.
They’re enchantingly pretty little things with their pale coffee-coloured jackets, white bibs, bright yellow wing flashes and brilliant scarlet faces. They look too exotic to be found in an English garden … but they are, and I can see them from my window: clinging acrobatically to the feeders, hopping daintily on the bird-table … trying to rip each other’s wings off … 
‘Aggressive’ doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it. I’m firmly convinced their cute little faces are red so that the blood doesn’t show.
(Photo credit – Gudgeon on Flickr.)
… you find a name and a time written in your Filofax and they mean nothing to you.
That happened to me today, When I was checking what it was I had in store for myself (I write myself lists, you see …). I found “10.00am: Janet Matthews”.
I frowned up at Gretchen, who was standing beside me at the time.
“Who the hell is Janet Matthews and why is she coming to see me at 10 o’clock?”
She had no idea. The name meant nothing to her. She checked the Centre diary. Nothing. She checked the telephone message book. Nothing.
10 o’clock came and went and nobody answering to the name of Janet Matthews showed up.
I told myself that I’d obviously had a mental aberration or something, and forgot about it … until, a few hours later, a small piece of white paper fluttered to the floor from my Filofax. I picked it up and looked at it.
It was an appointment slip. To be precise, it was an appointment for me with the Dental Hygienist in Cockermouth.
I don’t need to tell you when the appointment was, do I? Or what the name of the hygienist is?
Sorry, Janet. 
There must have been upwards of 300 delegates at the Forum. Thing is, they were mostly only interested in talking to each other …. like this …
and this ….
and the gentleman on the left was moving so fast past our display that he’s just a fuzzy blur (that’s not a punter Gretchen and Andrea are talking to … that’s the faithful Catherine … volunteer extraordinaire …)
Of course, we were tucked a bit into a corner and easy to by-pass…
…and we weren’t ENTIRELY ignored. In fact, when we had TWO people talking to us at the same time, I felt I had to grab my camera to record the moment for posterity …
… but mostly, I was just took the opportunity to practise my candid portrait shots on unsuspecting victims
…
Which are really quite good, even if DO say so myself …
And we DID make some useful contacts … so … it probably WAS worth the effort.
The finished product – almost.
Blame Sellafield Visitors’ Centre for the quality of the photo. It’s hot and murky in there.
If they don’t turn up the lights tomorrow, they’d better be hiring out guide dogs and torches.
8.25pm: I virtually dead-heated with 5.00pm and the arrival of Gretchen’s last client of the day, but I made it. All six posters are done and ready for display.
I finished too late to be able to take a photo of the last three I did … but here are the first three:
… are they not a thing of beauty?
I had the final three posters spread out on the floor of the treatment room, because together they make one big poster and I needed to see them as a whole – which is why I had to get it done before the client arrived. Otherwise there could have been ugly scenes as I barricaded myself in screaming:
“Twenty minutes more! Just twenty minutes more! Feed her parkin and hot tea or something …”
We’ll be setting up on the whole thing on Monday afternoon, and I’ll take photos of the entire display then so that you can tell me how talented I am … 
I’m down to FIVE pristine yah-di-dah-di-dah posters, and ONE completed one.
It’s a good job this forum thing isn’t until Tuesday …
The ‘Friends’, by the way, are dear faithful Harry Enfield, his dad Edward, actor David Swift (Henry Davenport in “Drop the Dead Donkey”), Rosie Swale – our wonderfully eccentric travel-writer/adventurer friend who is just coming to the end of a round the world run and will be dropping in at the Centre on her way down from Scotland to Tenby, and finally, there’s Richard Armitage – who has absolutely NO idea he’s our friend, but he keeps sending me signed photographs for our fundraisers, so he only has himself to blame, and in any event it’ll give me something scenic to look at on Tuesday … 
(I don’t think Mr Armitage wants me as a publicist – the blurb by his photo says: “He first came to prominence in ‘North and South’. then married the Vicar of Dibley before going on to run Maid Marian through with a VERY big sword …”)
9.30am: I still have six pristine, four foot long blank posters and a brain devoid of inspiration.
Actually … that’s not entirely true … I have six pristine four foot long blank posters, a brain devoid of inspiration and this photograph of me pretending to be a client in the treatment room.
The photo makes me look middle-aged and tragic. Even mushy soft-focus around the edges doesn’t seem to help much. I seem to remember that I was trying desperately hard not to giggle at the time, which probably didn’t help.
I KNOW I actually look like a cross between Michelle Pfieffer and Catherine Deneuve … so why can’t the camera show what’s really there instead of what my mother SAYS is there?
3.20pm: Next Tuesday we’re all going off, mob-handed, to Sellafield Visitors’ Centre to attend a one-day “Suppliers Forum”. Much to our surprise, we were specifically invited. We’ve never been invited before. In fact, we’re seldom invited anywhere because we aren’t the kids anyone cool wants to hang out with. Remember school, where there was a group of popular kids, and everyone wanted to be one of them? Yes? Well, that’s not us.
So, here we are, getting all excited like a kid going to its first party. My main job is producing all the pretty stuff … the posters and displays that are going to attract funders and moneyed persons to us like flies to honey.
At the moment, I have six, pristine, four foot long sheets of paper and a completely blank mind …
9.40am: To a pile of post, a bunch of emails (half of which don’t make much sense at the moment) and a deserted centre because no-one’s here but me. PLUS I have a frost-bitten finger-end. It’s the ring finger on my right hand. I’m not going to tell you how it happened, because I hate people laughing at my expense, but it involved a bag of frozen prawns and a wet hand.
You’re laughing.
It hurts. 
4.20pm: and I am downstairs in mine.
She is playing “Take this Job and Shove It” very loudly.
