Kitten blip

At long last, a kitten! Sadly not ours... It appeared a few nights ago (last night?) and was chased off the premises by Mr B (who is not a fan). Turns out, it belongs to our neighbours and, with her kids away for a few days, it is a bit bored. Hence the wanderings into our garden to play with the bees. I did try to repatriate it, but it just came back, so Rob used it as target practice (water pistol) while I looked the other way...

That aside, a day of Victorian parenting (trying to neither see nor hear the kids to be honest) but they found my quiet spot which was, unfortunately, quite near the paddling pool. Since the pool was now a bit slimy, I told them they'd have to empty it out with a bucket before we could clean it and refill it.... As you might predict that took long enough and burnt off enough energy that swimming - when it finally came - was brief.

This morning saw Mr B rush off to a meeting in London. I was up early to iron his shirts and then return to bed for a lovely nap ... which lasted five minutes until the doorbell rang: the car Mr B was taking had a flat, so he had to take the other one. Normally that wouldn't be critical, but with taxi services to provide tomorrow it seemed important to get the car back on the road.

So I pumped up the tyre, drove the car back to the house (he'd made it to the proper road before noticing) and enlisted Rob's help after a thorough read of the instruction manual. The spare seemed in good nick, apart from sitting in three inches of water in the boot... Water that became important when we realised the jack was completely rusted up from sitting in the same water. So, despite the ministrations of WD40 and a hammer, it was off to the garage where, after a short wait, our new lovely garageman whipped the wheel off in a second, found the screw that had punctured it (which he reassured me had been there for ages) and fixed it. All for the princely sum of 10 euros, but since he didn't have change for a 20, he said not to worry. (That's twice now he's fixed our car for free. I guess he sees future business from car-know-nothings who have very old cars....)

That and a trip to the lovely doctor made for a busy morning. The afternoon, I'm pleased to say, was a much calmer, more wine-driven part of the day.