They say old habits die hard. I don’t really know what this means, or what a movie series starring Bruce Willis has to do with it; but I think it refers to something along the lines of how difficult it is to stop bad behaviours, such as smoking, swearing or not updating ones blog on a regular basis. I refuse to let such laziness return to my website, so am writing this after realising to my horror that it has been ten whole days since I last blogged.

No doubt you are all wondering what I have done in my week away from WordPress. Giving the fact I live such an exciting, action-packed life, you would be forgiven for thinking that I had climbed a mountain, discovered a previously unknown planet and won a reality television show. You would be forgiven, but you would also be wrong.

There has been activity on my street. I live in a relativity quite area. There is rarely any trouble and the average age of my neighbours is 84. The largest worry for my fellow residents’ is parking – more specifically other people from outside of the area parking their cars on our street when they go to work or visit friends and family. While I am a firm believer that if you pay your road tax, you can park anywhere providing it is legal, I can sympathise with my neighbours as during the day, there are some very inappropriately parked vehicles – primarily ones positioned adjacent to each other, which would make getting lorries and emergency vehicles down the street near on impossible. Then you have cars which park on the pavement. Don’t even get me started on that. It’s tricky, as I also feel for those who need to park their cars, yet struggle to find anywhere to do so! Whatever. I digress a lot. I’ll get to the point…

There was delight all over the street one morning last week, when many of us were awoken in the early hours (well, 8am), by a truck driving down the road, followed by a group of workmen. The truck was clearly branded with the words every local resident had been dreaming of for years LINE MARKING. In under half an hour, large parts of my humble road had been marked in fresh, double yellow lines. Surely now all us locals are happy… until we want to park somewhere ourselves. Doh!

The other ‘event of interest’ to take place was a death. Luckily this death was only an animal, although I am sure the poor thing’s loved ones were very distressed and still in mourning. The deceased creature was a bird. From looking at its remains, one of the pigeons which sit on the house roofs. Not only had the bird died, it had been savagely murdered and eaten. Not just a bit nibbled, I am talking devoured. I was unfortunate enough to spot the carcass on the pavement, while walking home from work. It can only be described as what my plate looks like after a visit to Nandos (only without the spicy rice and coleslaw). There was nothing left, apart from bones and a few feathers. Normally, I would blame a fox for such a barbaric act, but this murder had taken place during the day. The other suspect would be a cat, but if David Attenborough has taught me nothing else, it is that cats only kill for fun. Therefore Mr Fox and Pussy Galore can be eliminated from my enquiries. Therefore, Detective Sean’s finger of blame is pointing at a human. Who that human is, I don’t know (it wasn’t me). That I find very disturbing.