Uncle reversed into the driveway at 12:05 PM – and we were hugged and presented with flowers and biscuits. I – due to the hens being inquired about – took him down to the end of the garden, where the chicken (currently the only one we’ve got) called Willow was upstairs in the hen house…

…and the kettle was boiled, and we seated ourselves with late elevenses. Chatting was about how he’d had to chop his lawn with shears (due to rain repeatedly making it too wet to mow and it therefore getting longer and longer) and it had taken him 3 days, and he’d found a pair of braces in the Marks & Spencers mens section, his Turkish hairdresser has numbered categories of haircuts; charity shops and wedding dresses were talked about, electric cars and their costs, their higher insurance costs, emissions (and after a good munch Soot headed for his dent on the back of the sofa at 12:40PM)(and the bells of the 780 year old church at the end of the road were intermittently ringing), oil companies (and I was wondering if sea animals would begin protests and start charging at – or violently head butting – oil rigs), Eurovision, and an English rugby player called Hannah Bottreman (and by then Soot was relaxing in his dent).

At 1:15 PM interesting smelling broccoli and cheddar soup was stuck in a pan; 15 minutes later – at the table, Mum was sawing a loaf up, and hospital food got discussed, pigeons were chasing each other around the sunny patio, pancake races, milk floats (and the milk float coming round Uncle’s childhood road pulled by a horse), technology, insulin pumps (and mine approaching – I’m type 1 diabetic), and Uncle’s primary school head teacher (Mrs Chopin) driving a Morris minor and revving it a lot were talked about; and Soot got up and headed to his mostly consumed wet food dish – so I put some extra gloop in there and most of it had gone by 2.30PM – when he was in his dent. The Met Office thunderstorm forecast had moved to 8pm, it was 23°C, Soot was still in his dent, and I’d just spooned sugar into my mouth (due to my blood sugar going low) when getting in the car at 2.40pm, yapping and howling was coming from the 2 very noisey pet Dachsunds owned by our next door neighbour, and Uncle had his flat cap on.

There were still bluebells in the Weston and Waverly Woods, I remarked on all the smart doorbells, Wolston was entered at 2:53 PM, then Brandon 3 minutes later; at 2:59 PM 4 horrendously bumpy and unpleasant speed bumps led to Brandon Marsh… (where we went with him just over a year ago – https://myencephalitisnotepad.co.uk/2023/04/13/an-easter-outing-with-uncle)

https://www.warwickshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/BrandonMarsh

…and in the visitor welcome centre a woman I recognised asked if I was doing a project, so I showed her my info card and explained myself, and she briefly described little diaries she kept at some point in her life I forgot.
Mountain backgammon, tree bingo, Create & Break 2 in1 Geode set, and 12.5 kilogram sacks of different bird foods were what I had time to spot in the shop; Dunsmore Pollinator Trail was taken…

…a father piggybacking his little daughter (and a little boy wailing walking alongside) were going the other way; and by 3:15PM, a bench by a lake and a little creaking metal wind turbine was sat on.

Movement occurred 12 minutes later, I spotted some massive mushrooms on a tree…

…and further along was a big wooden pine cone sculpture, and a woman on a mobility scooter coming the other way gave – when asked – directions to a bird hide (and I wondered about off road mobility scooters). I was sweating a bit when – at 3:45PM – a tree trunk bench by the lake was seated on, Mum wanted a video filming – so I filmed one, and filmed a short clip of loud bird twittering;

…and then the path was continued along, and by a big wooden fur cone was a wooden pole that said ‘leap like a frog on it’.

None of the fluttering butterflies wanted to pose, another bench was sat on, and once moving again – Mum was wondering how staff make sure all the visitors were out before locking up for the night.

We met the mobility scooter woman again and I had a quick chat to her about temperatures and something I forgot; back in the visitor centre – a big TV was showing footage from a camera in an peregrine falcon’s nest, and then the car was reached and I forgot when it moved.

Brandon and Wolston – where a duck race was advertised via a board on a pole and I could see a bouncy castle in the back garden of a pub on Main Street – were passed back through on the way home – reached at 4:47PM (and Soot the 20 year old cat greeted us).