Springwatch eat your heart out, and wot's this ear?

Our feathered visitors are all very busy. I took the opportunity, whilst the parents were away on one of their food gathering trips, to sneak a look into the nests. First the black redstarts that have nested atop the planks in the bread oven room. There seem to be two very healthy looking youngsters in that nest.
Similarly, the wrens seem to have a couple, maybe three, youngsters. It was harder to get a decent photograph there without risking disturbing or upsetting the young. All parents returned with food a little later during the morning.
Meanwhile, in the original swallows' nest, I have no idea what is going on, except that Mrs Swallow is in residence. I cannot enter that room without disturbing her, so we shall have to find out later what they have achieved.
Finally, the new nest in the workshop that I mentioned last week is now complete, but not in use. On many occasions both birds are in the workshop, but they may have decided it is not sufficiently peaceful in there to raise a family.

I received an email during the week from a web registration organisation in China. It seems that there is a company in China that wants to register the word Beaugut as a Trademark, and also register a raft of domain names in the .asia, .cn, .hk and .tw country domains, all using the name beaugut - nine domain names altogether. The registration authority was checking with me that I had no objection, as the owner of beaugut.com. Clearly, as this domain is a personal one, I could have no grounds to object, which I told them.

That got me to thinking. If they are keen to use the nine names they selected, they might just be quite keen to use beaugut.com, too. I shall just have to wait and see. If they make an approach with a sensible number attached to it, I shall probably cave in and sell it to them. If that happens, this site will change its address to http://blog.channing.info, our main site will change to http://beaugut.channing.info (that address already works) and the beaugut.com email addresses will become channing.info email addresses (which also already exist and work).

It subsequently appears this is at best aggressive, devious marketing, at worst a scam to sell China domain names - their response to my email saying I didn't care was an urgent plea for action on my part to stop these people registering the beaugut domains (which I had already said I didn't care if they registered). Neither subtle nor effective. Amateurs. www.mepco-china.org.cn - named and shamed!

A massive vote of thanks to the medical profession in this part of France. As of Friday afternoon I am off the nurse's visit rota, the wound having healed to their satisfaction. I still have a few days on antibiotics and Clare has to clean around the wound every day for a week or so - but otherwise we are done. Here is the final result, compared with what it was like four months ago before the cancer hit (the photograph on the left was actually taken last October).
There are still a couple of minor problems:

• from the scar to the very tip of the top of the ear is totally numb. It’s like the feeling you get when your foot is completely asleep. I am almost hoping the nerve damage doesn’t repair, as I fear the resultant 'pins and needles' will be pretty bad and, unlike with feet, stamping on it is definitely not an option!
• I have always had nice flush ears, now I have one sticking out. Whether it will settle back I don’t yet know.
• the hole left in my right ear is, I fear, too small to fit the earpiece of my iPod. I therefore need to use a proper headset. The only trouble is, the one I use is a Sennheiser professional DJ set which offers up to 32 dB attenuation of outside sound. In simple terms that means I hear nothing from outside even with the headset a very low volume!
  

However, these are very minor issues – generally, we are delighted and full of praise for the doctors and nurses involved.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine