I was chatting with a friend yesterday. Once again that earthquake came up in conversation. She said that she had been looking after her Dad’s parrot, Jack, at the time of the earthquake. Jack had been in the family for nearly 20 years.

Now it seems that tropical birds in captivity are particularly sensitive to earthquakes, even before we humans can feel them. (My sister said the same about her caged bird-”pets”).

Jack was apparently no exception. “He” became very alarmed by the seismic activity, and squawked loudly, flapped “his” wings and woke up my friend the “bird-sitter”.

It seems that this activity can also cause unexpected sex-changes in birds, for so shocked was Jack, that “he” laid a little parrot egg!!!

My friend’s Dad, cried when he found out. Not because Jack had become “Jacqueline”, but because Jack chose the moment to lay “his” first egg, when he (my friend’s Dad) was away on holiday !!

P.S.  I am not a fan of caged birds kept as pets.  I would much rather see them flying up to the tree tops in their native lands.

I forgot to mention the Earthquake!

 

Yes I know that if you’re from California, British Columbia or Japan, you’re probably laughing now and wondering why I’ve even mentioned it! Just for the sake of anyone who reads this and who doesn’t live in England, we are in the middle of a tectonic plate and earthquakes rarely happen here, especially anything as big as a “five point twoer”.

 

I was still working on a website at 0057hrs when my other half asked if I could feel something. I felt a vigorous shaking of the desk and wall and a deep and distant rumble. I looked at her suspiciously, but she wasn’t doing anything… The house wobbled like it was sitting on a huge plate of jelly and the shaking subsided. (Luckily the house didn’t subside)!

 

“That,” I thought sensibly, “was an earthquake.” I noted the time and we went to bed.

 

I checked the Internet news first thing in the morning to ensure that I still maintained my sanity. Confirmation on the BBC News left me with a warm, relaxed, earthquake-hardened man-of-the-world feeling!

I want to eat healthily

• Balancing protein, carbohydrate, dairy, vitamins etc
• at least five portions of fruit and veg every day

I want to eat ethically:

• Buying Freetrade products to ensure that the producers haven’t been conned out of their dues by the supermarkets or workers haven’t been mistreated.
• Making sure that the chicken and eggs that I eat haven’t come from chickens that have been reared in appalling conditions.

I want to eat organically:

• to make sure that my food isn’t covered in herbicides and insecticides, that would be stored up in my body for a nasty surprise in the future.

But are there tricky contradictions trying to adhere to all of the food ideals?

My local supermarket is the co-op (or co-operative as they are now calling themselves again in their new Freetrade ads on TV). They are doing a great job with promoting Freetrade, and I have noticed that they are only selling freerange eggs in our local store, but they can’t sell oranges and bananas without Air Miles in Norfolk in February.

One of the difficult contradictions I find eating healthily is that, (especially at this time of the year), to get fruit, you need to have it imported from Argentina, USA, New Zealand, Israel, Chile etc.

Should I be responsible to myself: Eating my 5-a-Day from the supermarket?… or to the rest of the world by not buying produce that hasn’t been locally grown in season?

Lots of fruit and veg can be dried, frozen, pickled or otherwise preserved for eating in the leaner months. Apart from that, at the moment I’m enjoying swedes, parsnips, leeks in hearty casseroles and stews.

Hello Everyone! My name is Richard Benjamin and I live in Norfolk, UK, (not the one that’s in Virginia USA)!!

This is my first post. I struggled to think of a title for the blog, but eventually settled on “Fly above the Rest”, as I was also thinking of straplines for my newly rebranded web design business, which will feature flying fish!

Hopefully, I’ll gradually get as good at this as lots of other people are with their blogs. My favourite bloggers are Alex Robinson & Darren Cornish (who both blog on a closed intranet) and Rachael (Ace web designer/developer) at Calm Banana.