Fat Thursday

A new visitor to the table today. As you can see they had already liberated one of the fat balls (previously triple wrapped in the string on the right) and this thug was working on the second. He succeeded even before the morning fog had lifted. Lots of photos of birds today - including a whole series on a really interesting looking bird that I hadn't seen before and wanted to identify... after much studying of the bird books I can now confidently identify it as a house sparrow... I'm sure Mr B (who can spot a great tit from a hundred paces) despairs of me ever being able to identify any bird accurately.

The kids are much exercised by pancake day (fat Tuesday here, hence the title) and Katherine thinks I should buy a pancake mix, so lamentable were my last two attempts at pancake making. Actually, they didn't see the very last attempt which was the herb pancakes to wrap the beef wellington the other day, and that went rather well. All the same, I may have a few practices while they're at school so I don't stuff it up on the big day.

You'll be delighted to hear that I finally faced up to the cornice mitring (somehow mitre-ing looks better) today and after a few false starts got my groove back and all is cut and waiting for Mr B's steady gluing hand at the weekend. To celebrate, and to make up for the fact that I had four feet (yes I measured it) of ironing to do, I awarded myself an iTunes romcom rental - in French - which was rather better than I expected (Heartbreaker, starring the always fabulous Vanessa Paradis). And I learned some decidedly interesting French too. To punish Mr B for his dissing of modern 'romcoms' last weekend, I may make him watch it too tomorrow night. Once I get used to him being away in the week, it's ok (ish). But the first week after a long break is hard.