Twitter

I noticed that my tally of followers has been creeping up. It's now nearly 50, despite the fact I block people who appear to have nothing in common with me. My "Following" tally is also creeping up, and my resolution to follow no more than 20 has fallen by the wayside. I feel compelled to explain my use of and attitude towards Twitter. I like it a lot, and find that I can find out useful stuff and make some pleasant contacts with folks with similar interests.
The original call to tweet came from my good friend @jaq652 who thought it might be a good way to keep a dialogue going when I was working in darkest Milton Keynes. It was. It was also a nice way to enjoy the wit and wisdom of @stephenfry, and to embarrass@jaq652's teenage son (how uncool to be followed by your mum's mate, and worse, to be too polite to unfollow her).
More recently, it's birders I find myself following. Unsurprisingly, they do tweet a lot. unlike fungi folk.
Many people seem to rejoice in the number of followers they have. That's fine by me. As I said, I don't especially want to be followed by people with whom I have nothing in common. More significantly, I don't want to follow lots of people because I want to be able to do people the courtesy of reading their tweets, and responding when appropriate, and even though as a retired person I have plenty of time on my hands, I can't keep track of large numbers of people.
Just lately, I had a couple of nice replies from people who though they had detected a note of despair about my hopelessness as a birder. Mea culpa; I should have used an emoticon to show I was not as despondent as I sounded. I might have a little rant soon about the true meaning of optimism. Watch this space.
If you follow me and are reading this, and I don't follow you, I apologise if that offends you. It shouldn't. Reply to a tweet. I like twitter as a 2 way thing, not as a voyeuristic thing, so tweet up!!! I've already unfollowed a number of more famous people than you for failing to entertain or inform me, or just being a bit too up themselves :-)
I've recently put a counter on my "Penny Bun" blog. It turns out that I do have a few readers, which is nice. Please comment because although the blog is a diary to remind me of what I've been up to (I'll soon be too old to remember - I've already started keeping sugar from Starbucks - a sure sign of senility creeping in) I'd like some feedback. I spent a big chunk of my working life trying to persuade people of the importance of feedback. Phew. Glad I got that off my chest!

Howler and other school based "book" comments

"miss, we've just seen a video called 'the training of the stew'"

"I've still got a tub of woodlice in my room."

...and

"we'll do task 25 if the bacteria haven't arrived"

A bumper week

"I'm glad the rabbit died"
(oh, perhaps you had to be there.)

and a tweet from shefwildlife:
"Strange bird report of the day - Frigatebird sp reported over Huddersfield this morning!!!!!!!!"

It's been a while...

... but I heard a couple of good ones from a snack bar operative at Banbury station this week: 
"She left without her lettuce" and
"Sorry, I can't sell you that beverage - we don't have the right cups."

Twitter

Just signed up for Twitter, which I can use as an intray for "the book". Just to get my own contribution from last week down on record. If anyone out there wants to follow me, please click on the title

I googled twitter

Sadly, down south is not desperately fertile ground for the book.

"The book" Southern version

A contender for "the Book" from a colleague:
"Forgive my appearance - I've been horizontal abseiling to demonstrate friction"

Ultimate spin.

In today's Observer:
'We only call ourselves the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership because if we called it the Grey Squirrel Annihilation League people might be a bit less sympathetic,'
What a wonderful quote to build a lesson around!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/19/red-squirrels-protection
for full article