Starling

There's a flock of starlings living in the garden and they like to sit up here on the high chimney pots. The trouble is that they keep falling down the chimney. We hear them cheeping and pecking and scratching about in the boarded up fireplace in our bedroom. Some of them make it back up and some don't. We unboard the fireplace from time to time and liberate survivors.

This is rather a sad and gloomy tale. One minute you're up there on a high chimney pot with a grandstand view of the north isles, of headlands and lighthouses and the cliffs of Scotland's northernmost edge beyond, and the next you're falling into a dark cavity from which you may never return.

This is terrible. This is tragic and depressing. I really wish I hadn't begun telling you this story. But the weather began to close in on us again, this morning, shortly after taking this photograph - it's grey, with storm force winds and horizontal rain out there now - and it hasn't been a vintage week, and a tired mind is drawn to disasters.