How to do Rekjavik and SW Iceland in 5 days...

I'm on a mission to visit countries that none of my friends have been to. (Previously this involved a trip to Venezuela and there are many reasons why nobody goes there), but this week, Iceland, 'the land of fire and ice'.

Let me start by saying that Iceland is quite endearingly, the least pretentious place I've ever visited.

It started with my experiene of Iceland Air. The staff were polite and professional looking. On the flight, I listened through a range of Icelandic artists (none of whom I'd heard of), and the obligatory Bjork back-catalogue. The nifty touch screen showed a choice of films, TV, 'What to do in Iceland' and a history of Iceland Air and I'd have been happily occupied if the flight had taken twice as long as it did (just 2.5 hours).

The view over the interior of Iceland as you fly in is majestic - it's like a snowy kind of moonscape. The interior is completely uninhabited but you can pick out mountains and craters and volcanos.

First impressions are important. Reykjavik airport is smart, wooden-clad and scandinavian-styled and I immediately noticed an absence of advertsing on the walls. You don't realise how submerged in ads you are in the UK (unlesswell, you've just experienced the virtual assault of flying Fly-Lo, er, I mean EasyJet or Ryan Air).

Iceland Air bought out Reykjavik's largest tour operator in the 90s, so they're pretty vertically integrated. There probably isn't much space for competition anyway, which might account for the lack of ads on arrival. There aren't even any billboards on the drive from the aiport into the capital, and the whole drive threw up just one KFC and a branch of Subway.

The next thing you quickly realise is the reality of it being January. Although Iceand is known as 'Land of the midnight sun' for its 24 hour daylight from June to August, during the winter months, the sun rises at about 11am and sets about 3pm, giving you less than an hour of real brightness.

Strolling around Reykjavik is a low-key experience. In contrast to the ususal high-rise development and showiness of a typical city, the shopping and eating district of Reykjavik feels like a small town. Houses and shops are nestled in side by side, in the past constructed largely out of driftwood (Iceland ran out of trees when the Vikings settled), and now clad in corrugated metal.

The main shopping street doesn't feature a single recognisable european or american brand - no Starbucks, no MacDonalds, just charming, diverse and independent cafes selling yummy cakes and pastries and really good coffee. Icelanders take their coffee very seriously, so as a confessed coffee snob, I was easily satisfied.

On the doorstep of Reykjavik is a wealth of impressive landscape, as Iceland's unique location straddles the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. The geology creates a seismic system including volcanos like the unprounanceable Eyjafjallajokull (responsible for the 2010 ash cloud that grounded my flight to Istanbul), geysirs and frequent minor tremors.

Thanks to it's natural resoures, Iceland relies on hydro-electric power and geothermal power - energy derived from the wells of pressurised hot water below the earth's crust. Apparently, for years after Iceland's forests were depleted by early settlers, homes went unheated until the harnassing of geothermal and hydro-electric power in the last century.

Icelanders also benefit directly from geothermal activity by using it to heat swimming pools. Across the city are several geothermally heated pools, the most well-known natural pool being the Blue Lagoon. Its water is maintained at a constant 37-39 degrees celsius, so it feels like a giant bath.

The milky blue, steaming lagoon is surrounded by blackened volcanic pumice stones which at water level are covered in bright white deposit left by the water. The pool itself is in the middle of a lava field and through the steam you're overlooked by looming dark mountains. Even at it's zenith, the sun didn't really light up the lagoon, but as it set, sunlight streamed over the mountains and we had about half an hour of sun whilst everyone rushed for their camera.

The strange white silica mud reputedly has health benefits for psoriasis sufferers, but its also used as a face mask, so we wiled away the day swimming around to search out the hot streams, squelching in the white mud under water and slapping it onto our faces for a quick treatment (we had super soft skin afterwards). Another guest at our hotel told me his friend had recently proposed to his girlfriend in the Blue Lagoon. He'd primed the staff who were on hand with champagne to celebrate, and coupled with a successful viewing of the Northern Lights that evening, it must have been a perfect proposal!

Speaking of the Northern Lights - although we drove for 4 hours... we didn't seem them. I wasn't really expecting to, because the weather had been cloudy and overcast, so I'll have to get the much talked0f Joanna Lumley DVD instead...

Whilst I was there, I started to wonder about Iceland's economy.... With a total population of 320,000, an icey landscape and a 2.5 hour flight to the nearest decent-sized country, how could a domestic producer develop enough economies of scale to make production profitable? (You can tell I was reading The Economist on the plane). And isn't their food ludicrously expensive if they have to import all their vegetables? But then I found out that their food solution is amazing...

Near Sellfoss (the largest town outside of Reykjavik with a population of... 8,000), they have some greenhouses. But not just any greenhouses. These glass houses make up an entire market-gardening economy which feeds the country. One thing which isn't expensive in Iceland is energy, so this geothermal resource is harnassed to heat and light these greenhouses... all day and all night.

Approaching the greenhouses at night, the landscpae looks like something dreamt up for the X-Files. The area is blanketed in darkness, punctuated by glowing orange greenhouses. What's even more surprising is that the whole area is constantly seismically active, with 10-15 small tremors every day. How that works for greenhouses, I'm not sure, but the larger shakes reportedly do bring them to their knees. Consequently, all new build since the 60s is built to withstand shakes of up to 6.5 on the richter scale.

With Reykjavik being such a dinky place, most people head out on a tour, the most popular being the Golden Circle. It takes in the famous Geysir (after which all geysers in the world take their name), Gullfoss - a spectacular multi-level waterfall and Thingvellir National Park.

You're guaranteed a spectacular site when you arrive at the Geysir. It spouts hot water and steam about every 5-7 minutes, signified by an ominous bubbling of the puddle that covers the geysir. It smells like rotting eggs (as do most hot water taps), because of the sulphur in the water, but when it blows you see several vertical metres of hot water and steam - to the admiration of the crowd.

Second stop on the tour is Gullfoss, the great waterfall. Its difficult to apreciate the scale of the falls, until you see some people walking down the track beside it. When we saw it, the rocks of the falls were covered with gigantic, fat icicles and the whole scene took place under a flurry of snow. The river cuts down deep after the falls and carves out a steep-sided valley with rock walls on either side. Its' incredibly impressive, and I imagine even more so in summer, when glacial melt water keeps the rivers high and the volume of run-off is significant.

On route to the national park, the guide filled us in on some history. (Incidentlly, if you ever go to Iceland, book the Golden Circle Tour with the smaller company 'NetBus', and see if you can get Ratner Torrson as a guide - he's the best and most knowledgable local guide I've ever heard).

In absolute brief: Iceland was settled in about 871 AD by Vikings who headed out from Norway. It was broadly under Norwegian control until it fell to the Danish. Eventually, many years later it regained independence and re-instated its historic parliament, which had been founded in the 900s - the first parliament in the world. I think that's incredible and Icelanders do too - so they've enshrined the rock where the parliament used to meet within a national park and that's also been protected as a UNESCO world heritage site.

To reach the famous parliamentary meeting point, we set out on foot across the rift valley. The valley formed as the two tectonic plates drift apart (about 2cm a year). As a geographer I was in my element getting to see geological features you only really see in a textbook. The view from the parliament site is incredible. Behind, is the towering rock face of the North American plate, and in front, looking towards the Eurasian pate is a vast valley with views over mountains, volcanoes and an enormous glacial lake. Its must have been chosen as a place that would inspire people to make wise decisions.

The Golden Circle tour is an absolute must-do. It's breath-taking seeing nature and the elements at work in such a powerful way.

Now on to food... I'm pretty keen on sampling the weirdest things on any menu, I'll be honest, and this trip was no exception. We ate at the fairly posh Hereford Steak House, which offers two distinct 3-course set menus: Whale and Puffin. I went for the puffin.

I started with smoked puffin, which was dark red plummy in colour and pretty tasty. Second course was puffin breast, which was served as you would duck breast, but with a kind of steaky, gamey taste. Really filling and really delicious.

My friend had the lobster soup and the whale steak for main, and like true tourists we sampled each others. Whale was also very tasty, again kind of steaky, but it looked like a tuna steak. It wasn't until a few days later when someone started asking the tour guide questions about whaling, that I started to wonder if we'd done the right thing. But apparently, Icelanders only hunt whales to keep them from preying on the smaller fish and disrupting the food chain. Dessert was typical Icelandic Skyr which is like a stiff yoghurt. Not too sweet, but it came with ice cream and fruit coulis. Not that I'm a restaurant critic ;o)

Other bizarro snackettes included; fishybites (dried fish served in a bag, like crisps - salty but yum), boiled head of sheep (I looked at this in the bus station but inconvieniently had just eaten lunch, so I had no room), curried guillemot (I wasn't 100% certain I knew what a guillemot was, but its basically a seagull, nice), and chocolate with licorice pieces (surpsingly good).

You'd think it was a cliche if Icelanders wandered around in the traditional icelandic woolen clothing (think knitted Christmas jumpers with a pattern yoke round the neck), but lots of them do. Iceland does well out of their sheep; delicious lamb and lots of wool. All the shops sell gorgeous but highly priced (£100 a pop) knitted jumpers, cardigans and dresses - all fashioned from the local wool. I even saw a toddler on the plane home wearing a tiny yoked jumper - adorable! Bring your credit card if you fancy a souvenir - most were out of our price range.

Talking of expense - although the financial crash of 2008 did a lot of damage (Iceland's basically bankrupt), it did bring down the price of airfares and hotels for foreign visitors which are unprecedentedly affordable right now. Food and souvenirs are still pricey - you're going to be paying £25-30 a head for 2 courses and soft drinks, and alcohol is highly taxed, although we evened that out with some hot dogs and a noodle bar visit.

I'd say that the charm of Iceland is that its a country you can wholehertedly describe as unique. Geologically, there's nowhere with quite so much activity. Socially and linguistically, there are no divides - no class system, no dialects and it's not a big enough place to become factional. Everyone is embraced. Icelanders know who they are and know here they came from, which seems to given them a quiet and friendly confidence.

Credit cards are accepted absolutely everywhere from hot dog stands to tourism mini buses. They operate everything with an enviable and seemingly effortless efficiency which makes you wonder why we don't follow suit and save ourselves the aggro...

...Until you remember that their tiny, almost tribal population is 0.5% of the UK's.

The unfortunate potato incident

I'm a bit of a maximiser. Or an optimiser. One thing I am good at is efficiently organising lots of activity in to a short space of time. When it comes to time management - quantity is the winner, quality is often the runner-up.

Recently, I've been doing an exemplary job of eating economically AND healthily, green living and exercising every day - I feel like I deserve a reward. On Mondays, I walk everywhere, food shop (with my bag for life), go to the pool, do pilates and go the gym. Isn't that an organisational achievement?

However, yesterday the plan went awry. On returning from pilates to prepare dinner for myself and boyf, I discovered that my enormous, super healthy potatoes which had been in the oven for over two and half hours (in tin foil - M's suggestion), were not even remotely cooked and nor were they crispy.

Trying to make the most of the situation, I microwaved them, and served them up - but they were REALLY undercooked - mine was inedible, and this annoyed me on many levels:

1)See aforementioned description of Mondays. I was very hungry.
2)We now had reduced time to digest food pre- gym (imminent indigestion).
3)Flat mate had just brought in a deliciously unhealthy curry (tasty)
4)Boyf must think I am incapable of cooking something as straightforward as a potato. This annoys me the most.

So, predicatably, I rant about tin foil, poor culinary advice, rubbish ovens, useless rented accommodation, ruined timescales etc etc. Boyf, predictably, gets angry because he thinks I'm taking it out on him (I'm not)- says I'm reacting utterly disproportionately and chastises me.

We eat in silence. Afterwards, he refuses to sit with me (I have been childish etc), and instead vegges on his macbook in the other room - unwilling to speak to me. Once again I'm 12 and I've just been sent to my room ...

We walk to the gym, work out and walk back and he drives home.

I still feel irked. Misunderstood. Why can't he see that this has become less about the potato and more about the fact he wouldn't listen to my rant and empathise, more about his subsequent reactions? Why can't he humour my 2 minute rant and then I'd be done?

Tears, texts and tempers. I'm thinking about how this looks to an outsider and I'm not coming off well... So the next day I decide to email him:


















Sheepish apology made. I can't quite believe we got this far. He emails back:













Evil potato.

A walk in the woods

It began when I expressed less than the required amount of faith in boyf's financial intentions for the future. This quickly snowballed into mistrust, and before I knew it, we were standing in an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty shouting unpleasantries whilst passers by admired the view. Woops.

Unable to concede to an apology and entering damage-limitation mode, I suggest we postpone our lovely autumnal walk, so as not to let the mood taint this beauty spot indefinitely. I set off in the direction of the car park. Boyf follows, at a distance of several paces, and we walk back to the car together but alone.

I attempt reconciliation, but mess it up but now there are more present to overhear our wranglings. I am excruciatingly embarrassed, and suggest we get into the car, hoping that half an inch of metal and glass all round will provide adequate sound insulation for the ensuing barney. Boyf however, does not want to get into the car. I reason. He is unrelenting. I warn him that I will have no option other than to drive off. Boyf does not get into the car. I retrieve his phone, keys and wallet, deposit them on a bench where he is sat and drive away.

This is quite unlike me. I wouldn't describe myself as stubborn (yes, but who does? Its unflattering), but with a sense of irony, I realise that's exactly his current perception. I pride myself on ability to think, discuss, reason and persuade. Debate. Cajole. Concede when in the wrong. But not this time. I drive off. For 15 minutes I circle the country lanes, thinking about what I have done... abandon my boyfriend in a wooded car park in the middle of nowhere, with no phone signal, no coat and no idea where he is.

Guilt overcomes me. I drive back and look for boyf. I head off in the direction we originally walked, wondering if he has done the walk without me.I pace out the entire walk and return to the car park. 1 hour and 15 minutes have now elapsed and no sign of boyf. I think about the non-existant phone signal, his complaints if he has to walk further than a mile (only previously tested on shopping trips - I am extrapolating from there). I am worried.

Then a text squeezes through to my mobile on less than 1 bar of signal. Its is from boyf who seems repentant. I reply, telling him I'm in the car park. Boyf says he is walking home. "Home" I estimate is a good 25 miles. I drive to find him, but can't, so I text back, asking for further identifiers (a 6-point grid reference or a SatNav in his pocket would both be of assistance at this point). He is silent.

30 minutes later, I receive another text, "Meet you in Costa". I am puzzled. The nearest Costa is in town. Almost 2 and half hours have elapsed since the abandonment. I drive past then park and when I reach Costa myself, he is standing in the queue.

He smiles. I smile. "Did you get the bus?" I ask. "No, I didn't", he defends, sounding slightly hurt. I do the maths and make it around 5 miles between the abandoment point and Costa. "I walked here. 5 miles. I followed the road signs and walked through the lanes, up the hill and eventually over the common. Then I recognised where I was and headed for town", he volunteers. I am very impressed.

Number 1: Boyf walked 5 miles.
Number 2: Boyf navigated from literally the middle of nowehere, to Costa.
Number 3: Boyf is buying me a coffee, with a smile on his face and shows no signs of damage after the aforementioned journey (other than extreme thirst, judging by the size of his drink). I am moved on several levels.

But what comes next moves me more. We spend an hour talking like adults over a coffee, in the manor we should have tackled all this in the first place. We're still in public, but this time nobody is overhearing us, and if they could, this time I'd be more than happy for them to overhear our sensible, mature, adult discussion.

We make up, talk about what lights each other's fuse, and work out a plan to reduce the likelihood of it happening in future. With a mature sense of satisfaction having eventually worked it out, we leave, hand in hand and walk back to the car.

He is vociferously proud of the 5-mile achievement. I calculate the distance involved in two laps of Bluewater shopping centre... 4.9 miles. Well there's a goal for the future :o)

Destruction of good body image in easy steps and how to reach size zero

Why is it that every time I go to the doctor - no matter what the ailment, the solution aways boils down to one thing - lose some weight.

This time, doctor Googles my symptons (some kind of medical Google I hope, otherwise I'm asking for a refund on my National Insurance contributions, cos I could do that.) He then Googles the medication I'm requesting - something a friend got prescribed for identical symptons.

Doctor declines to give me the drug, explaining I'm at risk of DVT. This is especially likely if you have a family history of it (I don't), or if you're a smoker (I'm not) or... if you're overweight... at which he looks me in the eye.
The word "overweight" and eye contact. I wait for it, oh and there it is... "Can you get on those scales please?"

Step Number One Complete - Uninvited Confrontation About Weight.

[Unlike the waifs who look in the mirror and see Vanessa Feltz - my self esteem has always been unnaturally healthy. I always look in the mirror and see a size zero.]

Mercifully, the scales are in kilos and being an imperial child, I've got no idea at all what the conversion to stones and pounds is.

Step Number Two narrowly avoided (Let Me Shock You: This Is What You REALLY Weight).

Dr looks up my "ideal weight". I'm watching the screen as he does it and I can see a label which says 'Weight to lose' or something. Although I can't work out the conversion, I can see that the computers is suggesting I need to lose almost half my body weight.

Step Number Three begins: Where Do I Even Start With You.

I am not happy. Dr establishes that I am looking at the maximum weight I could lose before I would enter the dangerously underweight zone. Right. Well thank goodness for that.

He starts to talk about how I should "try and lose some weight, because that is bound to help my symptons and anyway its much healthier, blah blah blah...". Not rising to the bait, I say; "I have been watching my weight actually, but nothing I eat and no exercise I do seems to affect my weight much in either direction".

Dr retorts with, "back in the old days when we were allowed to lock people away in rooms, they always ended up losing weight - you're eating more than you think, I'm sure".

Step Number Four (You Have An Unrealistic Perception Of The Situation).

I know doctors must encounter hudreds of pie-eating, donut-inhaling, virtually inert and brought-on-by-self-diabetics in their working week, however I don't number amongst their ranks.

However, in the same way that it's pointless telling a psychiatrist who's trying to section you that you're mentally OK, I can see no point in attempting to prove this to the doctor, so in a mature moment, I agree to "try harder". Dr tells me to try and lose 5 kilos and come back in a month.

Step Number Five (You Haven't Tried Hard Enough).

I convert 5 kilos - 11 lb. When I was back-packing and contracted my own version of amoebic dysentry (I couldn't eat much and what I did either got thrown up or went straight through me... for 8 weeks) - even then I'd only reduced by 7lb.

During the next week, I've forgotten the inital reason I went to the doctor and how much weight he's asked me to lose. Primary goal is to prove to doctor that I'm not a Pie Eater. After his Dickensian starvation comments, I decide that starvation is required and this time I will keep a perfectly honest food sheet for a month and PROVE HIM WRONG. For a week I survive on about 1000 calories a day exercise by swimming a mile every other day - fairly Dickensian conditions.

Size of me after 7-day pointless starvation exercise? Unchanged. Self esteem? Size Zero.

Beware of The Warehouse...

"Eee hee!" in the words of those kids off the Simpsons... Chez SH HQ, today has been designated warehouse day. A charming occasion when most members of the team are dispatched to our cold, isolated warehouse to rifle through poorly labelled cardboard boxes covered with at least 5 years of packing labels, searching for items to be packed up and taken to site this Easter.

Most members of the team that is... apart from ME!

And how do I choose to exercise my freedom? Attempting to ensure that *I* will be the first customer to purchase a coffee from our town's latest premier coffee house - a new branch of Costa Coffee which opens today :o)

[My Costa fascination is well recognised. The mug on my desk is a Costa mug, and regularly people give me disapproving looks and ask if I stole it from a franchise. As if! I paid good money for it! I'm not sure that raises me much in most people's esteem though. I have been known to calculate the value of things (like my salary) in the common unit of currency... the price of one medium, black, Americano.]

In our office, I am in the fortunate position of curating our tuck shop. Hence, my desk is the equivalent of the kitchen at a good party. Lots of people coming and going, finding what they came in for and dispensing pearls of wisdom to me in return.

Come the afternoon, the wanderers return from the frozen wasteland of our warehouse and I await news of the day's efforts from which I was so pleasingly excused.

R enters. I'm guessing she's after a Cadburys Caramel. I ask for news. Apparently M (who is quite small) has been designated "ledge-monkey" and has spent the morning high up on a ledge that no-one else could stand up on, peering through boxes nobody could reach.

At ground level, R has had an equally fascinating time. I hear how unrelated items returned from previous events have been discarded in mixed boxes. Several unusable and filthy plastic beakers, random items of lost property and my favourite (and potentially most useful item)...

R stumbled across a range of international plug adapters stashed in an unlabelled box. "Why on earth do we keep these?" she enquired to G - person supposedly in charge of warehouse looting chaos.

"They're international plug adaptors - we keep them so we can give them out to any international speakers if they turn up at the main event without their own", he justified.

R is not convinced. G has been known to hoarde a host of pointless items in the warehouse in the past. Previous victories include convincing him to dispose of about fifty 4'x6' cubicle dividers in a state of extreme disrepair and occupying much needed real estate on the warehouse floor.

"OK," she conceded "These could be quite useful, I suppose...". [Pick your battles.] She continues rifling through the armoury of adaptor plugs in the box. "Isn't it a shame they all convert english appliances to US sockets"...

Tech-chivalry -- coding for hankies

Something sweetly reassuring happened to me yesterday. I was the recpient of some tech-chivalry. What is tech-chivalry you ask? Well let me explain...

In days gone by, ladies were cocooned within a benevolent, patriarchal society. Comforted by the knowledge that should something disastrous and otherwise unanticipated occur, the men in their world would admirably leap to their rescue; an offer of an umbrella, perchance it should rain; provision of a hanky, should something provoke them to tears.

Now let's be realistic here. These days, my coat has a hood. Rain is annoying, but rarely does it discomfort me more than the sheer annoyance that I wasted 20 minutes straightening my hair. My bag is large. It always contains an umbrella AND a pack of tissues. I'm reasonably self-supportive should a mishap occur, so previous opportunities for chivalry would be lost on me.

So what happened to me yesterday?

In the way that only a distracted, multi-tasking female can, I broke three pages of our [live] conference site which I'm responsible for editing. I deleted the main navigation and overwrote the original pages. No going back. Compounding my fury, I was mid way through explaining to a colleague the supporting arguments for my assertion that I should NEVER have been entrusted with responsibility for editing sites outside of our content manager... when the phone rang.

I answered it, noting from the caller display that it was one of our service providers. He was returning my call, to tell me about a bug fix for something I'd reported earlier in the day. I tried to listen as he told me what he'd fixed and why it had happened, but all I could focus on was the clock ticking by as more and more people would notice my evidential muck-up on the conference pages.

"Are you OK?" he said, and I mumbled that I was fine, not to worry. "Are you sure?" he said again, "you don't sound it".

No pain, no gain I thought. So I confessed to him the nature of my nice little mess. "OK", he said, "let me see the code, I'm sure I'll be able to see the problem".

Less than 5 minutes later, he'd identified the problem (a script referencing the wrong website) and showed me how to fix it. What's more, he offered to stay on the line whilst I dutifully copied and pasted his correct code on to my duff pages and uploaded the correct code to my site. It was all good again. Perfect.

And that was it. When I really needed someone to rescue me from my lame, girly predicament (let's not even pretend it was particularly complicated), along he came to offer the proverbial hanky. Simple yet effective, like producing an umbrella when it started to rain. How modern though - that little gesture from a techie said more to me about chivalry than any crisp, white hanky offer ;o) Thanks C!

That pigeon has it coming....

How is this fair? Flat mate returns home to another (obviously sleeping) flatmate who's room is next to the bathroom. Flat mate decides to embark on mobile phone conversation at 12.37 a.m., in said echoey bathroom, at no small volume thus effectively WAKING THE DEAD.

Now I'm left with nothing to consider except how fast the wind speed is outside (hard to tell, our shabby double glazing doesn't fit the window panes so anything above a breeze conjures up an image of a tornado) AND how many ways there might be to kill the cooing pigeon sat on its feathery nest outside my window in the middle of the night.

Do birds not usually sleep at night? Why must it coo when its dark? I did think at first that it was the rusty gate or the pizza shop sign blowing in the wind, but after closer investigation (poking head out of window, clapping and shouting at pidge) I have discovered that he alone is the culprit responsible for the prolonging of my sleep deprivation.

A few weeks ago, M was in the supermarket, talking about my pidge dilemma, when someone came up to her with a solution... apparently you have to mix up some bird seed with milk and some ex-lax. Pidge eats, pidge gets ill, pidge dies. Easy as.

Now, I'd like to say that I'm pro all forms of wild fauna, but that would be a lie. I could kill the pidge with my bare hands, if I could only reach it from my window sill. Alas, the ex-lax option is looking like a viable solution.

Flat mate is back in bed, several slams of door later (ably assisted by the draft from poorly fitting windows - the best friend of all teenagers making dramatic door-slamming exits during a strop). I wonder what was so important she needed to call someone at 12.37.

Now there is a _slight_ problem with my pidge-murdering master plan... I live in a busy commercial area of town, near shops and restaurants, several floors up. Whether I were to select the ex-lax version of the plan or the BB gun alternative, I couldn't say for sure I could control precisely _where_ the pidge may plummet to its death... which means it could be on the head or at the feet of some unassuming pedestrian, out to buy their milk.

Given the illegality of my intended action (all wild birds are protected), it could be difficult to conceal the fruits of my labour and the evidence of my crime. Even if I did manage to kill an ambitious 35 of the 40 or so pidgeons behavingly like cast members of a Hitchock film, the only place to dispose of the bodies is a commercial dumpster our flat shares with the other restaurants and shops.... eew.

17 minutes past 2. I've just remembered that someone told me you can actually hire a sniper in my town - to pop off the pidges... he's licensed and comes with a gun dog, police protection and a letter of authorisation from environmental health. I love it when a plan comes together ;o)