Joy unconfined

I apologise to anyone who was disappointed that I didn't write my usual Friday "Grumpy Old Man" piece, but the truth is I have been having a lovely time. My Central Heating Boiler is well repaired, my desktop PC is fully recovered from its viral attack, my pair of Mallard are still in love and trashing my pond, and, to crown some good days, I received a chunky royalty cheque today for two books of mine that I actually thought were out of print.
As a bonus for a good weekend, I had my Hampshire birding mate, Martin, to stay. He's the one who has month lists and trip lists as well as year lists and life lists. The task was to see how many species he could clock up his visit to the Fens (and the North Norfolk Coast). And I was there to help him, well, egg him on anyway. The target was one hundred species, and I believe we got up to ninety something. Let's face it, in Costa Rica, you'd clock up a hundred in the first hour. But this is the East Anglian fens and this is the month of March, so it wasn't bad. We were let down by the fact that most of the summer migrants have not arrived yet, though we did get Chiffchaff and Garganey (see pic).
So, with all of this joy, how could I be grumpy?!