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 IN THE WOOD a Great Tit is making its 'squeaky bicycle pump' song; 'Tee-cher! Tee-cher! Tee-cher!'It must be time to mark out territories again. I don't remember having heard the ringing song since last summer. It makes me feel that spring isn't so far away. At a glance, a bright, almost florescent, green patch on the shady rockface of the quarry looks as if it's been applied from a spray can. Actually it is a film of powdery Pleurococcus algae.
 The old year seems to be going out quietly. A couple of fisherman sit on the towpath. There's not much birdlife in evidence. A single Wood Pigeon sits at the top of a willow. I feel restless, a feeling similar to the one I get when I'm spending my last day of the holiday in a foreign country and I know that soon I'll have to catch the plane and leave. I can't settle to anything. There's that nagging feeling that I should be doing something worthwhile before we leave the 1900s for good. If 'the past is a foreign country', my nature diary is a traveller's journal. I hope it has caught the flavour of the way things were. A lot of the scenes that I take for granted are set to disappear for ever.
Will it still be the same river in the year 2000? We shall soon see.
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As we walk across the bridge on our way to a family party, I realise that this will be the last time we'll cross the river this year. The last time this millenium, if you go along with the popular conception of it.