Film critic, bedtime robin, laughing farmer

You cannot see passers-by on the other side of the hedge which borders our garden, but you can hear intriguing snatches of conversation. Overheard today was a woman's voice: "No plot, no nakedness, it was a shit film."

I read in in a review of the new book, Birds Britannica, of a robin that managed to build a nest in an unmade bed, while its owner had breakfast.

The following wonderful picture comes from Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which I have just gone back to: "I heard a great laugh, the greatest laugh in the world, and here came this rawhide old-timer Nebraska farmer with a bunch of other boys into the diner; you could hear his raspy cries clear across the plains, across the whole gray world of them that day. Everybody else laughed with him. He didn't have a care in the world and had the hugest regard for everybody. I said to myself, Wham, listen to that man laugh. That's the West, here I am in the West.