It was a nice short working week last week, what with taking Monday off to play with Ian, and Friday afternoon to play with The Builder to celebrate his retirement.

Although - I’m not sure how long he will remain retired. He seems quite happy at the moment, pottering about in the house, messing about on the Internet, digging in the garden, organising the allotment. But I do wonder how long it will be before he gets bored being at home all the time on his home (alas, I can’t retire. The very suggestion would cause the bank manager much mirth indeed!). Also, how long before we notice the missing boozing and cruising money. We shall see.

In the meantime, it was quite nice to head home at lunchtime on Friday and to have a peaceful afternoon messing about and not doing anything very significant.

Come to that, we spent most of Saturday messing about and not doing anything very significant either.

And, more or less, Sunday as well.

It is true that we ate well. A lovely lunch at The Nettle on Saturday. Very nice chicken noodle soup on Saturday evening. A super slow roasted piece of brisket on Sunday evening. We had a really nice New Zealand merlot with the brisket.

We did a bit of shopping and a bit of gardening and a bit of not-very-much. I made some cup cakes and an apple pie which would never have passed by the dragon on Professional Masterchef who stands between the contestants and Michel Roux Jr (who is standing in for John Torode who I believe is playing with the Australian Masterchef). But back to my pie. It wouldn’t have got past her because the pastry was very, very short so naturally didn’t roll properly, so I laid it out in patches. Not Michelin star appearance at all. But tasted wonderful. However, this should probably be on the food blog!

I think the most exciting thing over the whole weekend happened on Sunday morning. The Builder had headed up to the allotment to collect a few things, and to organise the delivery of some cow manure . Marlo was asleep on our bed. I had gone down to hang some washing out down at the bottom of the garden. I came back up and into the house, leaving the back door open to let some air in, it being a pleasant, sunny day. As I walked into the dining room I thought: that’s a funny noise. I wonder what it is. It seemed to be coming from the lounge room. So I wandered in to investigate. And found, fluttering up against the window, clearly trying to get to the trees across the road – a robin!

The only other times I’ve been in a house with a bird inside it, the bird has been completely hysterical, crashing off the walls and windows. The robin wasn’t hysterical at all. It moved to sit on the bookcase while I went to the window and started to move things off it. It then moved to the other bookcase while I opened the window as wide as it would go. Then it watched me as I moved out the way. Eventually it decided that it had had enough of sitting on the bookcase – and flew out the window. No hysteria at all! But it’s just as well that Marlo was up asleep on the bed. He has never shown any interest in catching birds – but he might not have been entirely delighted to find one making free of the lounge room! I assume the robin had come in through the back door, which I had left open while I was hanging out the washing. But it had done well to navigate its way through to the lounge room window. Thru the back of the kitchen into the dining room, then under the ironing which was hung in the doorway and in the archway into the front room. Not bad going at all for a first time visitor!

And that was it. The most exciting thing that happened all weekend!

Longer working week this week. Lots of teaching – though much less daunting than last year when I had to do all the sessions myself; this year I have Caroline to help :-) . But, I have, of course, also lost my lift to and from work. It is certainly not the green and conservation-minded option but I have a discount pass for the cheesegrater car park which lets me park all day for £3, and it’s cheaper to pay for parking and diesel than to pay the bus and train fares so I’ve been coming in in The Vixen. This will probably work quite well until The Builder decides to get rid of Oscar when I’ll need to re-think. I’m quite enjoying driving in and out – but I do miss my reading time. I’ll just have to start listening to my Japanese tapes instead

PS - much later

That's the second fire alarm today. Second evacuation of the building. Added complication this afternoon was the presence of a wheelchair user on the level I'm on. Still, at least that meant I got to park him in the more-or-less fireproof staff pod and go up the back stairs to alert security to his presence. Otherwise we shepherd the able-bodied students out the emergency stairs and end up on Pond Street and it's an around a city block walk to get back to the front door! Going up the back stairs more or less delivers me to the front door. But I think that might be enough practising our evacuation techniques for today!