A not so clean sweep

I was all set to blog about decorating until I walked into the sitting room yesterday afternoon to find a whopping great collared dove sitting in my fireplace.

Fortunately the fireguard was up so my unexpected guest hadn't been able to settle on the sofas, or to do anything else less well mannered on the furniture for that matter, but was perched, looking a bit baffled, on top of a pile of pine cones and kindling. A collared dove's gentle cooing is one of my favourite sounds but my fondness doesn't stretch to having the owner of the coo in my firebasket. They don't look that big perched on the roof but up close it's a different matter.

Visits as a child to an aged aunt who had budgies, and would let them out to fly around the room and indulge their love of dive-bombing whoever was unlucky enough to be below them, has left me with a distinct preference for birds in the garden rather than in my hair.

The 16-year-old took one look and announced 'ugh, don't like birds, they flap, I'm not touching it'. The 10-year-old's reaction was 'aaaaw, it's cute, can we keep it as a pet?'. Great couple of hunter gatherers I've produced.

You know that feeling when it slowly dawns on you that the Fates are conspiring against you and your timing just hasn't been great? This was one of those moments.

Only the day before I'd decided it was time to get the chimney swept, order the logs and give the fireplace, which is creamy Bath stone, a good scrub. This is not one of my favourite domestic chores (and that's an understatement). It involves buckets of hot soapy water and a scrubbing brush, is hell on the knees and hands, takes a good hour and I put off doing it for as long as I possibly can. Until Saturday. Two broken nails and a lot of muck, and lord knows what else that had dropped down the chimney over the summer, later, the fire was looking lovely, clean and all ready to go.

So, of course Murphy's Law strikes again, and that's when a bloody great big, not so sure-footed, collared dove decided to fall down my chimney. It had landed safely in the firebasket without hurting itself but had managed to sweep the chimney, admittedly extremely effectively, as it flapped its sizeable wings as it descended, bringing with it a deluge of soot - all over my nice clean fireplace and hearth. Naturally.