Mmm... Brighton Pie.


The only thing better is a stick of rock cake.

Anyhoo, the trouble with singing your heart out is that you end up sick to your stomach. I recorded Lisa's tribute to the big-nosed crooner at 10pm on Friday night. By 9am yesterday morning she was throwing up into a bucket. Which is surprising, because if anyone's going to feel ill, you'd expect it to be the audience.

Having examined the evidence (not literally), I decided to assume it was probably a stomach bug rather than pregnancy (although the midwife did tell us that you're at your most fertile in the three months after giving birth), and I started to weigh up my options. Faced with a sick fiancee, incapable of caring for herself, and looking like death warmed up, I decided there was only really one course of action to take. So I strapped Amelie to my chest and went out to meet birds.


It's a murmuration. No, really.

Obviously I could have stayed in and looked after Lisa, but I felt I'd be of more help by allowing her to sleep for a couple of hours. And besides, I didn't want to catch anything. So having wandered around the charity shops for a while, I took Amelie to the pier to watch starlings.

Obviously she slept through the whole thing, but let's face it, even if she'd woken up, she wouldn't have seen much further than my manly chest and the giant furry hood of a snowsuit, so frankly she wasn't missing much. I did consider dangling her over the railings of the pier in a tribute to Michael Jackson, but apparently things like that are frowned upon in the wake of the Baby P enquiry.

Anyhoo, the good news is that Daddy's got an eye for the birds and a half-decent camera, so he didn't need his daughter's help to have a good time. I spent a very enjoyable half hour watching fifty thousand starlings flocking over the West Pier as the sun went down. It was like a plague of locusts with feathers.

So here's what Amelie missed...

I should probably have set that to music. Possibly something by Wagner (the composer, not the bloke in 'Hart to Hart'). But fortunately it's not too late. The RSPB are appealing for contributions to form a new display about Brighton's starlings. Apparently they want "anything that describes the phenomenon, from images and comments, to sketches, poems and songs."

Songs..? I think I might know just the person. And let's face it, I've written a few sketches in my time. With Lisa's singing and my jokes, we've got that prize in the bag.