Morning Garden Invader

It's been a weird sort of day, with annoyance followed by oddness followed by annoyance followed by outdoorsness....

Annoyance 1
With yesterday and today taken off work, but knowing I had a piece of admin to get completed by the end of the week, which I just hadn't had time for in the office, I had my laptop home. Turns out my recent OS update has lost all of my bookmarks, including the remote log-in link. Long story short, I was in the car at 6.10 this morning to go into the office to finish that, which naturally lead to reading through the 73 emails received in my absence yesterday, and feeling like I had to deal with a couple of things.

Oddness
Home in the burgeoning traffic, just not quite heavy enough to fill me with dread, I heard a shout for the garden. "That's not a chicken," I thought, "That's a pheasant!" And so it was. A little first for our garden - I heard one in the park for the first time yesterday as well, so I wonder if it's a wanderer from Holyrood Park... Showered, and he was still there, but now there was another new arrival, a black and white cat, watching from behind (see the extra). Never seen him before, but he was happily stalking the on-edge Pheasant. Eventually that got a little too close for comfort, so the Pheasant departed noisily. 

All this had been watched by Isla, who now decided that cat should definitely not be in her garden. She shot out the cat flap, tail a bushy puff, and promptly chased the interloper up a tree at the bottom of the garden. She then guarded the bottom, while a murder of Crows gathered above, cackling their discontent, with intent to live up to their collective.

It all ended as he edged down, then made a run for it, still pursued by Isla.

Annoyance 2

As Mel went out for brunch, I took the little Mini to a Mini specialist to see about some work. I'd emailed about it, and been told it's best to pop by. Once there I was told that they don't really do that kind of work, and he couldn't suggest anyone else. So why not tell me that in the blinkin' reply to the email?!?!?!?

Outdoorsness

Day was saved after picking Mel up, putting up with irritating city traffic, and going for a walk that I'd promised Hares on, and which we fortunately got lucky with (another extra); then a bit of gardening to round things out. 

I thought about hitting the turbo for an anti-blues endorphin hit, after missing out on that by going to the office in the morning, but there's a scratchy throat to contend with, and I know tomorrow's session is a killer (as I've done it twice before and not managed to hit the numbers) so I'm saving myself for that.

Which means it's almost time for pizza and beer.... Which is, erm, better preparation.