Robin

Bah!Humbug! This isn’t the time to get soppy about the warm and generous world we live in.

- As told to Simon Barnes

This moment, this very moment as the winter solstice bites, is when you should realise that life is a cruel and terrible drama and every day you survive is the most glorious triumph.

Monday

I sing. You got a problem with that? I sing throughout the winter and few other British birds do that, bloody fools. What’s more, I sing as well as any male that was ever hatched. I sing as if my life depended on it — because it does. Some find it a beautiful song: haunting and wistful, so unlike the songs we will sing in spring. Certainly the phrases are longer and the individual notes more sustained, but who gives a stuff? My sweet song has a meaning and that meaning is piss off.

Tuesday