(no subject)

About every month or so a hawk is brought in to Parliament to kill a couple of pigeons and scare away the rest. Last week we saw it flying around, so I thought I'd go up on the roof to get a better view. Almost too much better, as it turned out; I opened the roof door and walked straight into the falconer. My sudden appearance startled the bird now perched on his wrist, and in its ensuing flurry it clocked me across the face with its wing.

Occasionally in your life you find yourself in situations you could never have envisaged even a couple of years before, let alone have thought might happen when you were younger. Under that category I can safely file the experience of being smacked in the face by a Harris' hawk on the roof of the House of Lords.