Today I am writing in the library again after another early morning start (in other words I arose at seven because there was a bloke coming to fix our shower). The early morning starts have been excellent for maximising the usefulness of my mornings, but have completely shattered my ability to function as a human being beyond lunch time.

I plod on, however, with weary eyes and a growing irritation at the world around me. I actually reprimanded a bloke in the library today (to be fair to me he was a total chump - speaking on the phone in the library at the top of your voice after receiving a call on a stupidly ring-toned phone is NOT okay just because you are hovering several metres away from the silent reading area. This is not how sound works. I am not a sound engineer but I have ascertained this fact through years of first hand research - and I happen to know that attempting to deny this fact makes you a giant chump).

On days like today, in order to wake myself up, I go outside to enjoy the sun on the lawn outside the library while I have a coffee or lunch. Outside this library, there is a proud bronze statue. For some time now, I have wondered about the spikes they put on the tops of statues these days in order to ward off the birds - have you seen them? - thin, mean little skewers designed to prevent birds from resting and covering the bronze head and shoulders of the anointed persona in the lurid white birdpoo-wigs all statues used to wear when I was a kid. Today, at lunch time, this suddenly appeared to me to be richly bizarre. To want a statue commemorating a long-gone hero, to desire to elevate him (or, if the statute is mythical, her) to a grand scale... even this desire seems pathetic. But do human beings then want to strip their favourite idol of all dignity by sticking spikes in his head, lest nature overpower us once again by crapping on what we consider to be life's significant leaders?

And how do the birds know not to go there? Have some of them been skewered and others of them heard about it? Or do they just see the spike and avoid the area? In some countries, statues secretly electrocute offending birds. Cleanest statues in the world, most fuzzy looking natural aviators. At least spikes give them a bit of a heads-up.

All in all, a lonely day spent with chumps and seagulls, but an educational one nonetheless. I've emerged with an anti-statue stance and I've come out (yet again) as being extremely anti-chump.