My bin overfloweth ...

With false starts and rubbish doodles. What a waste of time and build-up of frustration. A lot of stomping around and shouting at cats and stupid people on Radio 4. Anyone for painter's block?
But I have now settled on something to restore my piece of mind ... a still life with budgies. Ta-ra. Which I suppose, given the presence of said budgies, isn't technically a still life at all.
The budgies just came to me. Not my favourite kind of bird but I saw some in the pet shop at the market the other week and if you get past the naffness and general Fifties and Sixties-ness of them, and their amazingly bad-tempered sound, they really are beautifully coloured and marked.
Like most people (or so it seemed to me then) we had one when I was small. A green one called Trixie that got drunk one Christmas on whisky and had to be rescued from a glass where it might have met a right royal death.
Only it wasn't Malmsey.
My grandmother had a succession of Billys and my aunt a Perry who sat in a cage on top of the television for about 15 years, though he was often flying round the living room as I recall.
The garish budgies and the garish Spanish flowerpot I bought on Tuesday beneath a massive peal of thunder it is then. A match made in heaven.
Let's hope it doesn't end up in the bin.

In the meantime I shall put up a vaguely related picture to relieve the monotony of a wall of text. Green parrots who paid us a raucous visit a while back.