Checking out the birds.

I believe it is a common fallacy that it is somehow more satisfying to spend a day indoors when it is raining but you should rather go outside when the weather becomes fairer to appreciate the excitement or whatever the hell people do out there.

Quite the opposite, chums. I only gain any satisfaction from spending a day indoors when it is gloriously sunny outside - otherwise, what are you actually missing? A day when it is raining is precisely the right time to leave the house and do something. I find that a great many experiences and feelings are defined more by what they are not than in fact what they are.

My mum recently forced me to go on a walk to a nature reserve because it was nice outside. Going for walks is a peculiar form of child abuse, because although it is not illegal I do consider it morally reprehensible to tear offspring from the bosom of the DVD player or the edification of a good book and the comforting glow of a warm spot to spend some time staring at wildlife you cannot fathom and birds you don't recognise.

The place was filled with twitchers, toting three-foot long binoculars on stands and getting excited when some other tit comes along and twitters from afar. There was quite a buzz at one end of the reserve where we had waded through hundreds of metres of damp and filth to stand at the back of a crowded hutch and not see a kingfisher that had been spotted that morning. It was probably embarrassed at the attention from these avian paparazzi and assorted weirdos, who had clearly risen with the lark and had been there all day, with their subdued clothing (I had my lovely bright red anorak on - frowned upon I gathered), flasks and their snot and rain-spattered faces.

The only things I recognised from my shoebox-like refuge were a swan and a pigeon, which my neighbour informed me was a dove mere seconds before he arrived face down in a marshy pit to suffer a horrid and undignified death.

It is a peculiarly British thing to consider suffering at the hands of nature to be somehow good for the soul, when all you really accomplish is chilblains and insufferably muddy shoes.