11.45am to 12.02pm

I’m eating my lunchtime delivery of Chinese satay, whilst across the road my idiot neighbour’s leaf blower fails to commit to its task. In an eruptive, asymmetrical melody of VROOM, vroom, vroom, VROOM, VROOM, VROOM, vroom he pushes leaves across the footpath like these bits of chicken on my plate.

In front of my desk is a big window that faces south. No sun enters the room all day, but that’s how I like it. The potted palms on the balcony outside tell me the wind is gentle for now.

Beyond the balcony, the tress are big natives, growing healthily in the warmth of the spring sun. Many birds live in them because Australian birds are sunshine birds, light and flirty. Not like say, the serious sea birds of the Shetland Islands who bunker down in crevices of rock, facing the ocean, studying life and death weather patterns through the heaviness of mist.

I hate the man with the leaf blower and the noise. And where will the grubs, and the slaters live now? They don’t have anywhere to hide, and I know they’ll be spotted by the birds who’ll eat them. Those loose, freewheeling birds. Maybe the insects should hang out with the puffins.

My girlfriend rings. We talk listlessly for a while. After we’ve hung up, a spider kills a bee that’s been buzzing above my head. It’s flown straight into a web strung between the wall and the window. I know it’s happened because the annoying sound it makes suddenly stops. I look up and its laying on its back like a drug-addled junkie. Its antenna and legs jerking slowly in hopeless defiance, and the spider digs its fangs deeper into its abdomen.

I love nature but...now, here comes a blowfly over my head. Bit of a problem