Well, yesterday I popped out into the garden and tidied up some of it a little bit. I did some weeding (not very much), cut back the sedums in the back garden, and cleaned out the bird water things, and set up my slug traps again. I use the cheapest beer you can get – they love it. I also put up some new bird food – suet with seeds in it. One is half of a coconut full of the stuff, the other is small balls which fit in a special feeder.

While I was outside I discovered a present from the cat, left helpfully up the side of the house. A dead mouse. It’s buried in the communal burial ground at the bottom of the garden, which has various small rodents in it, and various birds. There is a separate burial area for the three baby hedgehogs . .   :-(.

Next day, that is today, what do we see? a grey squirrel helping itself calmly to the small balls of suet. Not the whole ball, just bits. So I roused the cat from her slumber and held her up to the window so she could see her territory was being invaded. I’m not sure whether she just didn’t care, or couldn’t actually see the squirrel, because she just sat purring in my arms. I think if she could hum a little tune, she might have done just that.

Eventually, of course, she did spot the squirrel and went outside to see what was what. Did she chase it? no. She sat in the middle of the lawn, looking at it very seriously. A sort of “death stare”, and the squirrel obligingly ran away. But then it was at least two thirds her size. She’s a very small cat, only weighs 7lb, so a squirrel is fairly intimidating.

And it rained for a lot of today. That’s quite helpful, actually, because the ground is much easier to work if it’s been rained upon. The next time I go outside to do some stuff in the garden, which hopefully will be Tuesday, I am going to cut back the sedums in the front garden, and weed that. I also need to split the pink dicentra, which has grown much too big for its boots.

ED phoned today – coming to stay this weekend. Lovely. Can’t wait. YD had also phoned about alf an hour beforehand. Happens every time. One daughter phones, then the other one. It’s like there’s some sort of link between them. Love it.

Hubby’s eye is much better. Am going to start phoning the hospital tomorrow to see when my operation is likely to be. The sooner the better.

Backed up both the computers today, both Linux and Windows. Always a slight problem. Today discovered that one of the external hard drives attached directly to the RiPNAS wasn’t working. So I fiddled and faffed about with fuses, usb connections, and finally the six-gang 10 metre extension lead, and have finally made it all work. But now I don’t know which of those things caused the problem, so will have to test them all separately. Bummer.

While hubby was asleep this pm I watched “We’ll Take Manhattan” about Jean Shrimpton and David Bailey. Very good. Not what I was expecting, but excellent nonetheless.

And am currently reading Paris After The Liberation by Antony Beevor. Very good. God it must have been fraught. The Petainistes, de Gaulle, the Communists, and the Resistance, never mind the normal people, all struggling to sort themselves out. Hmm.

Well, nearly teatime now. Toast, I think, with jam. Yum.