Bird House Fly Spray

Overheard when Hay came home:

Hay (ironically): "Are you sure you bought enough fly spray?"

Chairman: "It's for the cluster flies - they started congregating today."

Hay: "But it's not exactly the thing to have next to the bed."

Chairman: "Yes it is, the buggers always buzz around my side."

Hay: "And why do you think that is then, Pig-Pen.?"

Thought I'd use some of the tools I've been buying to build a nesting box for the swifts - hopefully getting them to nest in the eaves at the back of the house might be a natural antidote to the annual cluster fly problem. The eventual aim is to build a barn owl nesting box (not that they eat cluster flies).

The job wasn't aided by me using some remnants of the oak cladding, which is feathered. Nor by the fact that I'm not that handy with wood butchery (I swapped woodwork for Latin at school, and then dropped Latin as I wasn't very good at that either).

Hay maintains it is OK, so long as the birds aren't that fussy. They'd have to be birds that have been on the council nesting box waiting list for quite a while. Hay's dad pronounced it functional, rather than aesthetically pleasing. I prefer the word rustic and sympathetic to the house - a veritable "domus avibus".

For some strange reason he declined my offer to make him a rustic TV cabinet. I guess he didn't want to catch himself on protruding screws.