As Iris said about my post below “At last a picture of an animal you aren’t eating”. As my old art school pal Elissa said “I went on holiday and took a picture of a duck next to a bin. Good times.”

What can I say? These are the kind of holiday pictures I don’t spread around that often but there is nothing more fun to do on holiday than sit in a park and talk to the birds – or in my case pretend you are all the birds talking having conversations amongst themselves.

In Portugal after a massive row about trams to Belém, Anthony and I made it to Jardim do Ultramar – The Tropical Gardens. As it happened, we got there around feeding time. So all the ducks and geese were getting closer with the hope that I would have more than a Molotoff cake tin in my plastic bag.

As we watched the birds this ridiculous man trundled along with his two daughters, and a sticker on his forehead I guess one of the kids put there. The elder daughter, about 9, had with her a long stick she had collected along the way and decided to my horror to use it to poke all the birds who had come for their dinner, or shoe them out of the way so they couldn’t get near the food bucket. Some of the ducks were about to lay an egg any minute. Some were just very cute. Anthony and I were getting madder and madder watching her. Not one to complain just from the sidelines and hope by the power of my mind a situation changes I went and defended these ducks against this injustice. I asked the girl could she tell who was going to lay an egg – we had a conversation about animals and their right to space on the planet and please don’t poke them with the stick mindlessly. She looked at me like I was a crazy old lady. Not the first time. And as soon as I turned my back she was off poking the birds again. But when she knew I was looking, it was with a little less vigour than before. A small triumph worth getting out of bed for. Makers of “Invisible Children” watch this space.