Candlemas, Wednesday 2nd Feb: low sky, mist and dropping rain clearing, grey squirrel looking exactly like a giant furry caterpillar, head down at the tip of a perilous twig stealing birdfood from a coconut shell. Robin blackbird thrush hedge-sparrow wren, blackcap garden warbler, great tit, blue tit, goldcrest (only one, this winter so far) goldfinches, greenfinches, starlings. Not counting jackdaws pigeons and collared doves. . . I did not take part in the RSPB garden birds weekend survey: I think people with cats that go outside are barred, but I'm amazed at the variety of birds managing to survive in our garden, despite the cats, the tree rats and the ground rats. They keep their wits about them and take advantage of being able to fly, I suppose.

I wish I wasn't old enough to have seen flowers tucked in gun turrets before now. I wish I couldn't remember 1979 (Iran, fall of the Shah), and 1991, (darkness at dawn for Russia). Not to mention what happened to the original Spirit Of Eighty Nine. Modern History is such a tissue of cliches! Demonstrations good. No major political reform can be achieved without the support of dedicated, single-issue Non Violent Direct Action. Mass Market bad. But when the millions pour out onto the streets, bent on toppling an evil Ancien Regime, then of all the disparate, contradictory interests involved it will be the most power-hungry group, and therefore the most ruthless and oppressive, that leaps to fill the power-vacuum. Knowing what's all too likely to follow, would I have been out on the streets in Cairo, decorously headscarved and shouting for joy? Of course I would. There's always a first time.

But my money's on Mubarak hanging on, like Mugabe. We're in a blocking system.

Watching: Splice, last night. (Warning, Spoilers) Lunatic nerds descend into hell. I hoped this would be Blood Music by David Cronenberg but it ended up being Okay-not-great verging on absurdly predictable. Best bit, a toss-up between the moment when the two naked mole ratoid synthetic lifeforms decide to go for each other in a territorial battle, and corporate Big Pharma gets engulfed in a wave of blood, goop and tank water. Or the moment when doe-eyed Clive returns to child-abuse survivor Elsa, having been caught getting actively naked with the pubertal (but chronologically about three months old) ersatz little girl they made. And he's like "What are you looking like that for? Okay, I raped a toddler. So? It's not like I contaminated the polymerase chain reaction or anything" But then he bursts into some tears Keanu Reeves could have made more convincing, the mad edge is gone & we'll have to make do with those cool, Guillermo de Toro bouncy satyr legs. Worst bit: everything after that point. Still, we watched it & at least we weren't at the cinema, so were free to laugh at the daftness.

Reading: The Bone Woman, Clea Koff Gripping and disquieting: the details of how you unearth incontrovertible evidence of a genocide are relentless, the viewpoint is very personal: a story about a young woman's experience and feelings, as much as about the grim and extraordinary tasks she feels compelled to embrace.

Les Aiguilles Rouges take the keynote photo spot, because it's that time of the year. No matter what happens to the weather from now on, the light has turned. Twigs and trees have begun to glow, birds have begun to sing and winter is on the downslope. There are plans to be made, and my plan is that I'm going to walk into that picture, this July.