After our wildly late night last night, we all made quite a late start. Even Molly didn't emerge until 9, preceded by a small wave of cats. It took her a while to get going, and when Shirley arrived at 10.15 to take her for her haircut and weekly shopping, she still hadn't fed the cats. I was therefore honoured with the duties of Cat feeding for the morning and given quite specific instructions, some of which I followed. Either way, all the cats got something to eat and drink, but I was supposed to shut the one called Noisy, (because he is noisy), in on the porch to stop him nicking food from Gingie and Tortie who live in the workshop, but I couldn't get him to go to the porch. So Gingie and Tortie may have got less food than usual but they don't look like they'll starve with just cat biscuits this once anyway.
Me and mum went to the post office after that excitement to get some stamps for her postcards (still blank)and then went to the co-op to get some salmon for dinner. Amazingly they don't appear to eat salmon (the chiller cabinets contain about 85% beef, 10% chicken 3% crab delicates, whatever those are and 2% fish). There was a miniscule piece and a massive piece of trout which both looked tasty but the wrong size. There was a little bell to ring and when mum did, an expert popped out through a little window, and kindly cut the big bit in half.
Lunch was at Tim Horton's with Shirley and Molly. Mum was feeling a bit peaky but I did the English proud with a 'panini', a-small-coffee-with-milk-and-sugar (ordered without mishap or hilarity) and a double chocolate ring doughnut.
In the afternoon Molly went for a nap while Mum wrote postcards and read the blog so far and I read my book, and photographed the inside if a fallen tree beast the porch which clearly housed not only a bee colony but also a squirrel's nest. Molly got up but was feeling really sick so went back to bed. We'd thought of going to visit Pat and Hamish (or possibly just Hamish depending what time Pat was off to Edmonton for her sleep apnoea test), but didn't really want to leave Molly on her own in case it got worse. While she was resting, there was another big thunderstorm with torrential rain, and an hour-long power cut. Shirley's grandson Douglas also tried to pop round for a visit. We suggested he came back tomorrow and he also brought a little something for us - lizard tongues (they both had one this morning at the hair dresser's, and Shirley had bought me and mum one each too). They are basically very long very cheesy and quite floppy cheese straws. You can see me using one to do a lizard impression.
We decided to go to feed the cats again, so that Molly didn't worry about them, and this time I did a better job. Even with good teamwork and a collaborative pincer movement we still failed to get Noisy locked in the porch but I guarded Tortie and Gingie so he didn't eat all their food, and gave him a snackette to distract him while the others had their dinner. I also poked all the limescale out of the very aggressive showerhead and stuck two of Molly's broken pots back together. A model of virtue.
Molly felt much better by the evening and we had tea and a good chat and she was very glad to not have to go out on cat feeding duties. She went off to bed about 8, and me and mum had some of the trout with potatoes and beans from the garden.
Oh and good news from school today - German got 67% and French 64% A*-C at GCSE, which was pretty good, given the horrible and dysfunctional set 2 German that Julia and I had to take over. Could still be improved on of course but for this year that was a good result and the head is pleased which is great too. It makes a nice change from Oakwood where few of the kids responded or improved their grade significantly, regardless of what interventions we tried to put in place. And I got A* for Spanish too, including full marks on 3 of the 4 papers, yay! All that hard work and long commutes back down to Horsham were worth it.
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