Sauntering Vaguely Downward

Bandit the campsite cat would like to know how much longer until the bacon is ready.

"Stop laughing, human. I'm going nowhere near that armoured rat."



Hedgepig continued to browse the seed bonanza in the garden for at least an hour with a brazen nonchalance that must have been infuriating to our resident feline.

One of the many things I haven't had time to write about in the past few months is that the bloke dug a pond in the garden. It's just large enough for a few plants, a handful of snails, and two goldfish, Flippy and Not-Food*. It took Sir some time to notice that there were fish in the pond, but now that he has, it's Channel 1 on Cat Telly every day.

* Short for "No, Mr Heron, go away. I am not food."

Telstar managed to get onto the roof of the dovecote, and then refused all inducement to come down.

- After at least 20 years of service (it belonged to the bloke’s parents before moving in with us in 2008), our microwave disintegrated dramatically this afternoon. The plastic around the glass door window crumbled into bits, like a wet biscuit.

+ This gave me an excuse to spend what is not a very nice day outside browsing the internet for a new microwave. I very nearly bought a fire engine red one, to match the toaster, kettle, bread bin, and Kitchen Aid stand mixer. In the end, I went for the sensible option: the white one with the biggest volume that was on sale at Curry’s.

- I had to go out to buy a cat flap for the extension window. It was my first time driving in over eight weeks and the first time I’d left the house for anything other than a family walk. I went the long way, to try to make sure I got a little bit of extra time behind the wheel. At first I went far too slowly, and then when I realised I was doing all of 25 mph in a 40 zone, I went too fast. It took a couple of minutes to recalibrate my road sense. Thankfully there still isn't much traffic in our area. I don’t love driving, but acknowledge it’s a necessary skill.

+ I forgot how pleasant our car is to drive. And how nice it is to have the phone Bluetoothed in so I can play music. Also, I filled up the tank the day before lockdown started. It’s still ⅞ full.

- The car park was crazy busy and the queues for the shops were long. Once inside, I noticed very few people making much attempt at maintaining social distancing. The cashiers also clearly hate the Plexiglass screens at the tills, because they keep leaning around them to talk to customers. None of the employees working on the shop floor had any PPE. I found this depressing, because as we all know, customers are arseholes (see below).

+ The person who helped me find the cat flap was ridiculously grateful about my determination to stay away from him. (As opposed to the customer who tried to slip behind him while he was fishing out the one I wanted, bumped into him, put his hands on his shoulders, and said “Oh, sorry, mate.” -.-)

- The builders are on site for the bank holiday weekend. Since we’re trying to social distance, we can’t use the garden and are trapped inside.

+ The builders are back on site! Progress is being made! Soon, we can haz roof on the extension.

- Keiki is not going back to school on 1 June. Our primary school is only opening to (more) children of key workers, and vulnerable children, not the whole of Years R and 1. He won’t get to see his buddies any time soon. He’s a very sociable creature, and he was looking forward to being with his friends again.

+ Keiki is not going back to school on 1 June. This is, if not positive, at least not completely negative. He’s making noticeably swifter progress with homeschooling than he was at school. It’s tough to parse how much of this is down to his new glasses and how much to the one-on-one attention he didn’t get at school. Also, Humuhumu would have been very sad if he’d gone and she didn’t.

- We will have to move out next month so that the builders can rip out all of the downstairs rooms, including plaster, carpet and ceilings, and gut the kitchen. Living upstairs nine hours a day with intermittent power and water supplies for four weeks whilst trying to maintain social distance from the builders, and also work and home-school: not feasible.

+ The new metal shed is arriving next week to sit on the slightly wonky concrete plinth we built for it. So we have somewhere to stuff the contents of those rooms.

+ On Thursday, 21 May, I wore makeup for the first time since 20 March.

- It took me ages to apply the makeup. Once I had, I forgot I had black eyeshadow on within five minutes and gave my eyes a good rub, thus rendering myself a panda for the rest of the day.

+ Fortunately the video quality on Zoom is so poor that no one noticed.

+ It is Caturday (see photo for winner of the Best Nose category in our house).