Leavings...

Having lived a slightly nomadic life (compared to many friends and acquaintances on this tiny island, some of whom have barely budged) over the last four decades, 'leaving' has been a large feature in my life.
Although it has often been me doing the leaving, more frequently it has been friends and family moving on.
I never manage 'leaving' very well, but I'm beginning to get the hang of it now. It's taken a while.
So, successful farewells are characterised by busyness. Packing, tying up loose ends, zooming around so there is no time for moping either before, or after.
This time, Jonny left to go back to Norwich, after a long weekend camping with us in France.

Big sky, tall surfer

Cat, Richard, Jonny

Enjoying the ambience in the evening...

Packing up the tent proved to be quite a distraction.

A luxury home from home...

I didn't much like the car journey to the airport, though...
Then, a few days later, Cat left us.
For New Zealand.
So we - she - organised a tea party to say goodbye.

Martyn didn't particularly enjoy tea from a tea CUP...he traded it in for a large mug

Dear Sarah

Dearest Renee

Tea party = chocolate cake. And smiles.

She flew off the next morning.













So we organised a barbecue lunch.  18 of us. Cooking and eating and laughing and talking - not to mention the clearing up afterwards - kept us busy and the tears at bay.

Then we tracked her flight on the internet, watching tiny planes fly across the screen en route to Dubai...and Australia...and further on...

Death of a mouse

After the shenanigans of a few weeks' ago, when I finally discovered that there had been a mouse UNDER MY BED, chewing at my door, I decided I needed to put poison down.  I'd tried a trap for weeks and weeks, baited with peanut butter or chocolate, but it was obviously an abnormal mouse as it didn't go for either.  (Friends have been catching a mouse a day for the last three weeks using Cadbury's chocolate fingers.  I feel there should be an advertising link in here, though I'm not sure it would be a useful one for Cadbury's.) And I stepped on it one morning, too - luckily it was facing the other way so my toes escaped harm.

So there's poison under the bed - where the mouse no longer goes, judging by the absence of droppings - and poison near the back door, under the bird seed.  We suspect the bird seed is the major attraction.

I walked in the back door last Saturday to see this:

One very poorly mouse.

I did feel bad. He is really sweet. (It must be a he or we would have been overrun by now.) Then I reminded myself about the sleepless nights and the mouse droppings in the cupboards.

So I covered him - after adjuring him to stand still so I could take a photo - with an empty ice cream container. And left him for Richard to find.

When Richard arrived home, the mouse looked at him hopefully for a second, twitching its whiskers, before relapsing into the doldrums.

I will gloss over what happened next, save only to say that the mouse is now in Mouse Heaven.  I hope. Because he was, really, quite sweet.