Let sleeping cats lie

This is one of the chateau cats, the one which was (necessarily) abandoned by its family after the fire and became somewhat feral as a result. Stroking him generally results in injury, but he was my best friend this morning when I returned from shopping with his habitual bed. In winter he sleeps on the warm bonnet of the most recently driven car, but for these long hot days, a soft top in the shade is clearly quite the thing. From time to time I try to brush off the hairs, but they are astonishingly clingy. I'll have to do a better job before Mr B brings his allergies home.

The rest of this morning was spent hacking and slashing at the garden to work out the frustration engendered by two extremely unreasonable and grumpy children. At lunchtime the news that CarbBoy had failed to get an extension for his 'Ancient Weapons' project had all differences put aside while CarbBoy wrote, TallGirl provided ideas and hard spellings and I dealt with Internet research, glueing and decoration.

And so family unity was restored in adversity.

The talk could have gone better for him, but I think the audience enjoyed the working (scale model) trebuchet and the gory tales about Simon de Montfort (boo). And I checked what lessons he had learnt: start earlier, read the instructions, do the essentials first and be nicer to your sister because she's quite useful really.

Later a lot of chat with TallGirl about music, though I'm not sure I am the best family member to be explaining semitones to her. And my description of major and minor keys may have been hampered by my only knowing major keys on the piano. I'm not sure saying 'oh you know, the sad ones' really covered it.

Later still a big storm brought some very much needed rain.