Journeys

Sunday 22nd Feb 2026

They came in their thousands. It was hard to believe how many there were. The sky was suddenly taken over by huge black shapes. We were in a bird hide at sunset when it happened and I could hardly believe my eyes. The hut was crowded with bird watchers holding binoculars. But you did not really need any help to see this spectacle. ‘Swoop, swoop’, cloud after cloud swished over us.  A small group was joined by another and another until there was a monster swirling mass changing shape in a split second in the sky above us.

When we went to the bird hide earlier in the month, we were alone, but someone wanted to join us. You have scan the QR code and fill in an application form before you get a number to unlock the door to the hide. But when we were punching the number in someone shouted.

“Wait, hold the door.” A couple were running towards us. “We do not have the number.” What do you do? Do you let someone into a locked hide? They quickly stepped inside telling us that they were RSPB members and had come from Nantwich to see the starling murmuration, but they had not known about the hide. So, we inadvertently let them in, and we stayed with them until we all left without seeing the starlings in their aerial dance that time.

I am getting used to using a QR code. We went into a restaurant in Yorkshire last weekend and had a wonderful, if expensive meal. When we had finished, I saw a QR code on our table in the corner. You had to put your mobile over it to pay. How easy it was. Except my phone did not have enough signal and I had to go to the desk and pay in the old-fashioned way after all.

I was visiting relatives and especially a long-lost cousin whom I had not seen for a long time. I took some photos and inevitably started to discuss our ancestors. There was Aunty Hilda with her permed grey hair and gap-toothed Aunty Lily smiling shyly in her wrap around paisley pinafore. We laughed about how old they all seemed to us when we were little children and now, we are even older and how strange we must seem to the younger generations.

On our way back over the Yorkshire Wolds, we hit the snow and ice. There was a gap in the hedge where the snow had blown in and frozen. Our car bumped over it with Mr T holding steady just like the skeleton sliders in the Winter Olympics which we watched when we were safely home.

(Taken from my column in The Star)