London, still London, still London, still London, not London but not far away.
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Sparrers clearly have a strong homing instinct.
Not strong enough. I miss (saving yer honourâs presence) proper sparrers.
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Fink we had one of them on the bird table a few days agoâŚ
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We used to have a rabbit the cats had taught to stalk birds eating crumbs on the lawn. He thought the idea was to jump in the middle and make them fly off in panic. Heâd get in through the cat door and help himself from the veg rack - when we werenât fielding complaints from neighbours about him eating their cabbages. His party trick was to shock sensitive visitors to the core by demonstrating his very close relationship with the tom cat.
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Born South Wales. Lived Cambridge, Brighton, Lewes, Farnborough, Macclesfield, Lewes again, Brussels, Brighton again alas (sorry to those who like it, but I wasnât keen on addicts shooting up in the lane next to my house), Abergavenny, now West Wales.
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Brussels? Oh you poor thing. 
Time is a great healerâŚYouâll eventually get over it.
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It beat commuting to London every day by the length of several marathons and a few orbits round the Earth. And the food was much, much better.
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They give you the wind something awful, but theyâre not as bad as mung beans or Jerusalem artichokesâŚ(What? What about the city? Oh. Well I expect itâs windy there.) Yes. Hmm. Well. Pass the spuds, please.
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The health system is excellent too, and I think they must have found a secret remedy. Perhaps itâs something they put in the beer (again superb).
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Two of us in a car drank our way across Belgium from East to West in the early 60s. The beer was delish, as was the food, and there was some special anti-crashing gunk in the booze. Organic, of course.
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Ooh paddock! Poash!
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Armitage, Iâm wondering whether weâve met! Also Born in Bolton, and spent time in Chester and surrounds - Christleton for a year. Also East London, Portsmouth and Southsea, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Essex.
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You better believe it! Itâs now being persuaded itâs a lawn to avoid stupid landscaping expense. But small, just in case youâre thinking stripey acres 
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Rough cut it with a strimmer, letting weeds/wild flowers grow but not too high. The bees will love you for it and maybe will leave you little presents of honey wrapped in dock leaves tied with bindweed.
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There will be a wildflower meadow and wildlife pond, but right now I need the teazles to understand they are not a crop and must grow in the fields. BTW weâve had zillions of bees attracted by the wallflowers. Itâs curious that amongst all the lists of bee-friendly plants the humble wallflower (4p a plant) is never mentioned.
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We rolled up the rather nasty lawn like a carpet so the soil wouldnât be too rich, rotivated, and threw wild flower and meadow grass seeds onto the place where it had been. It needs to be scythed twice a year, and the bees love us.
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Well done indeed! I hope you have a stream or small river at the end in which to take exercise and get some fresh water in your gills.
We had a new house built during the very cold winter of 1946-7 and my paternal grandfather died. Things were so delayed that we had first to live in various separate locations and then to cohabit with the builders. Once the ground thawed my father and brother turned half an acre of former farmland into a suburban garden (oh dear), admittedly decorative front, side and adjacent rear, with a veg garden and chickens further back. He was a dab hand with roses, the old man, and used to drive miles to look for unusual varieties. There were three lawns (I was appointed mowing and edging wallah) and how I did larf the day I woke to see a line of mole hills diagonally across the largest one. I thought it very artistic and aesthetically pleasing. Strange to relate, he didnât. Odd that, in fact he became very angry with the dapper little creatures.
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There are people who like moles, and there are people who like lawns, and never the twain. Or something.
Personally I cannot away with lawns: more trouble than they are worth, to me, and there are always ants and moles and dandelions and moss and all the other troubles which lawns are heir to, and you can raise your blood-pressure about them, but how often does anyone actually lie on their perfectly manicured patch of mutant grass and enjoy it, and how many hours of labour have gone into that moment?
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I quite often lie in our patches of random wildflowersâŚ
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