h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

9 months ago I started writing a journal entry entitled 'Looking _at_ a dirty old window'. It never saw the light of day. The point of it was going to be this:

I'd just moved into a squeaky-clean apartment in Jersey (for the weekdays, anyway). Opposite was a disused skanky old building - with dirty old windows - that was in such a poor state of repair that regularly people walking past would stop and stare and point and contemplate how it could still be standing. I would watch this going on from across the road in the comfort of my aforementioned squeaky-clean apartment.

(Boring, I know, which is why I never wrote it up).

9 months later...

The building with the dirty old windows is being demolished. It was 5 storeys high before Easter. It was 3 storeys high on the Tuesday after. It is 1 and a half today. The dirty old windows have all been knocked out, and I guess it won't be long before yet another squeaky-clean apartment block turns up in its place.

Meanwhile, I've not washed _my_ windows in 9 months, and although I live in hope, the there doesn't appear to be a window cleaner doing the rounds.

So now I'm "looking _out_ a dirty old window", and, on account of the building opposite being knocked down, I can now see that "down below the cars in the city go rushing by".

(Still boring, I know, but at least there's some kind of point to it).

Paff

It's not *that* boring...

Interestingly (and I use that word loosely in a thread with only 2 posts and already 3 occurrences of the word boring) the building is now gone...

... and there are now a very large number of pigeons and what look like doves (or maybe just small white pigeons) on the roof of the next-door disused old house, looking bemusedly at the pile of rubble that used to be their home.

One wonders what'll now happen to these poor evicted birds. And whether they were consulted during the planning application process.

Hopefully their mountains of poo won't have thrown clouds of dust in through your window as the building came down. Dodgy stuff is pigeon poop.

Well I've kept the windows shut over the last couple of weeks, mainly because of the noise. It occurred to me about dust too, but pigeon poo? Is it carcinogenic or something?

Woodpigeon poo is huge! I thought it was hedgehog poo for a while.

It can carry diseases and funghi - it's also acidic enough to destopy paint, so you don't want to be breathing it in if you don't have to. If you get flu-like symptoms, visit the just in case.

Thanks for the tip. Rather than getting that nasty stuff on me or in my lungs, I think it's safe to say it is all on the outside of my dirty old windows.