Road notes

Briefly warm enough to sit outside this afternoon.

One goldfinch, two sparrows (uncommon in our garden), sundry great tits, starlings, parakeets and magpies. A pair of pigeons going through some elaborate performance involving a lot of prancing, jumping and flapping.

In the road a skylark, that is to say what looks like a cross between a minibus and a camper van, and which brings in the Poles who are turning the bungalow opposite into a house disguised as a bungalow. Lots of steel getting into the new roof, and into quite a lot of other extensions going up round about - presumably the upside of the Chinese dumping lots of cheap steel on us.

In the next road a drive contractor who has moved into fencing. For a chap who sounds more like a gangmaster than a builder - this crew are Poles, which he certainly is not - he turns in a pretty good job, having done quite a lot of drives around here over the past year or so. Fence looks pretty good too.

PS: although the van has 'skylark' clearly & professionally written on the side, google seems to know nothing about such a thing. Most odd. I must take a closer look when it comes back in the morning.

Closer look now taken. Plenty of mattresses, sleeping bags, spare clothes and such like in the back. Perhaps they share camping grounds with one of the various travelling groups who have set up around Epsom. And while I am on the subject, the chickens attached to those at reference 1, now look to me as if they are fighting cocks, not for the production of the matinal boiled eggs at all. I suppose it is all a bit rough and ready, out in a field, with no proper cockpit - like the handsome brick one we once came across in a market town, somewhere in the heart of England. Perhaps the name of the town will come back to me at some point. Google seems to be much more interested in Jamaica.

But the van itself is now tracked down in google. Still no skylarks, but according to wikipedia: 'the LDV Convoy is a panel van that was manufactured by LDV Limited between 1996 and 2006. The Convoy was a development of the Leyland DAF 400 Series, which in turn was based on the Freight Rover 300 Series. The Convoy and its predecessors were the larger versions of the LDV Pilot (and its predecessors), all of which were based on the Leyland Sherpa series of vans that was first developed in 1974, sharing some components with even earlier models...'. Not in bad condition for its age.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/visitor.html.