The chunk of cold weather we’re having here in the UK at the moment is a bit of a problem for the birds. They’re having difficulty finding enough food. We wanted to help, but we have a bit of a problem – we live in the top flat in an old four-storey school building. We get to our door by climbing a set of metal steps on the outside of the building. Our outside space consists of a few square metres of metal panelling, with metal railings around it, and a long drop.

Feeders are available that attach with suction cups to the outside of a window, which seem like a good idea, but I’m not sure I trust them. For a normal house, if it falls off, you just have to go outside, pick it up, and stick it back in place. If one fell off our living room windows, it would fall four floors down, and land in a cut-out section below ground level, outside the basement flat’s front windows. Or, if it bounced a bit further forward by hitting the window sill, it could fall far enough forward to land on someone’s car.

Anyway, I hit on a solution last weekend – part of the packaging from our new microwave, some holes punched through with my Swiss Army Knife, and a couple of shoelaces:

It sat there firmly, and the food (a slice of bread and some seeds) didn’t blow away. Win. The birds, however, didn’t know it was there. Fail.

My boss had a good suggestion, though – add a couple of hanging bird feeders, and not only do we add more options for food, but we put something there the birds might actually recognise as a source of food. A white polystyrene tray probably isn’t going to say ‘food’ to a chaffinch, but a swinging tube of peanuts might. So, this weekend, we visited Pets at Home, and stocked up. Here’s the result:

Some food on the tray, and three hanging feeders, containing:

• Peanuts, with a spare bag ready for refills.
• Mixed seeds, with sunflower hearts to replace them when they’re gone.
• Fat balls, with a large tub full of replacements ready.

There’s only one problem with this now. You may notice the lack of snow – it’s pretty much all thawed here, and there doesn’t appear to be too much risk of more to come. We may be a bit late, but hopefully they’ll still enjoy a few treats.

We needed bread, so I took a walk to the local shop. I decided to go the long way around, though, by the canal, and give my camera something to do – it’s been spending a lot of time bored in a bag recently.

The canal was frozen – it was only at the end of the walk that I saw a small area where the water had broken through. The ice made for some interesting pics, though:

(Here’s the photoset on Flickr in case the slideshow above doesn’t work for you.)

Inspired by Chris Brogan’s New Year Post – here are my 3 words for 2010.

1) Restoration

Restoration my physical and mental health. Making peace with the past. A greater mindfulness and awareness of the present.

2) Joy

Making sure there is plenty going on to put spark and colour in my life. Not being afraid to do what I enjoy for fear of looking daft. In the words of Adam Ant “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of”. Participate more.

3) Motion

Getting active again (links in with Restoration) Exploration (links in with Joy) Learning new skills.

Thanks go to Chris and to Alexia Petrakos and Gretchen Rubin for providing such wonderful food for thought. Here’s to a happy and successful 2010 for all of us.

Now we’re in the last couple of days of the year, thoughts inevitably drift towards hopes, plans and promises for the coming year. And, of course, that means drawing my attention to my ever-present weight problem.

Regular visitors to my blog may now be thinking, “Hang on a moment, aren’t you the one who lost over 100lbs in a year? How come you still have a weight problem?” Well, I fell into the trap many people on weight loss journeys do – I grew irritated and annoyed with the plan I was doing, I stopped doing it, I went off the rails and now I’m right back where I started.

I’m now ready to try again, but with an entirely different approach. First of all, I’m taking a long look at what happened last time, and where it all went into reverse. During those 12 months where I was losing 3lbs a week or more, I was obsessed with “the plan”. Obsessed to the point that discovering an oily dressing on the salad I’d ordered could ruin a meal out. It got to the point I couldn’t sustain living that way and remaining sane.

Then there was the obsession with the scale. My mood for the day being determined by some numbers on a digital display. I remember helping out at my group, doing the weigh-ins, and I’d ask people how they were and they’d say “We’ll see, shall we?”. How is that a way to live? Letting the numbers on a box determine how you approach your day?

So from that I’ve found two issues that I can work on straightaway which I will be able to build on and hopefully achieve healthier habits and as a result, weight loss:

• Take a kinder approach to changing my eating habits. No counting, no weighing, just gently making adjustments at a pace I’m comfortable with.

• Build a greater awareness of what is going on with my body. Not to rely on the numbers on a scale, but to observe the changes in my body.

This approach won’t bring miracles or quick fixes, and it may be some time before I see any visible results, but a slow, gentle, kind approach to a healthier lifestyle makes more sense for me right now.

I’ll write more about my progress as I go on. Wish me luck.

I’ve been rolling with a fandom for a fair old while now, and while I’ve embraced the idea of cosplay, it’s taking me a while to get into fanfic. When done well, fanfiction can be an excellent companion to the shows and characters it celebrates, done badly and it can have you screaming in agony for weeks. I’m not really into the ’shipping’ (i.e. pairing characters together) element of fic, again, done well it’s good but done badly it’s cheesy and often wrong on many levels. My attempts at fic are usually based around taking my favourite characters and putting them in situations that amuse me for one reason or another. Here are a few of my creations:

Black Dog

Gene Hunt is a rockstar. I like guitar players. A story in which Gene finds himself alone in a room with a Gibson SG and a Marshall Stack had to be done.

Notes From A Sauna

An extract from Gene’s diary as he attempts to comprehend his day and put out of his mind some of the unpleasant things he’s seen.

A*S*H*E*S to M*A*S*H*E*S

A bit of a cheesy crossover moment as the lovely Major Sidney Freedman of the 4077th pays a visit to Fenchurch East to see if he can help Gene unravel what’s going on around him. It was either this or have the quattro turn up in war-torn Korea. I think I made the right choice.

I enjoy writing as The Guv almost as much as I do dressing up as him *cough*… it’s all good fun and I’m hoping it will give me the push I need to kick-start my writing for 2010.