When I was a kid, my mate and I were convinced that the old couple at the end of the road were spies (we were addicted to Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Famous Five Books) or nosy neighbours (we had indiscreet parents). The sole grounds for our suspicions (other than their kindly (but to us, sinister) greetings and enquiries about our well-being and activities) was that they had a pair of binoculars by their backdoor.

We often saw these binoculars because they also had a bowl of sweets for the children who held them in such low esteem, and we were quick to think of ingenious ways to knock on the door in the hope of getting a sweet.

Now I realise that I am A Nosy Neighbour myself.

For I have a pair of binoculars by my desk. And I whip them out at the slightest movement, despite the lack of neighbours in my line of vision. And thus I have been rewarded today by a gang of partridges scuttling across the field; and a brown blob on a telephone wire that miraculously turned into a buzzard doing a clever trapeze act in the gale.

But should anyone think of lobbing a ball into the garden and knocking on the door - don't bother. I've eaten the last Fizzy Fish.