At the Leaving Tupton party on Sunday, my former workmate Julia happened to mention that her mother has a fish-free pond in her garden, about a ten minute drive from our place.  What were we intending to do with our fish?  Nothing?  We hadn't actually thought about the fish! Oooooh - could she ask her mother if she wanted any.

At about the same time, Tabitha asked if there were any small fish in the pond.  If so, could she have some for their fish tank, which has been fish-free for some time.

Most unfortunately, they both asked this in the afternoon after The Builder had topped up the pond in the morning!!  But no worries.  He set to, lowering the water level so that the main pond had much less water in it and the back little bit had more - enough to keep any captured small fish but not enough so they could jump back into the main pond.

Monday evening, Julia, her daughter and her mother turned up with a fish net and a couple of buckets.  We all went out in the rain and spent a merry hour or so bucketing water out of the pond, through the fish net and putting little fish into the little back bit of the pond and bigger ones into a builder's style bucket that Julia's mother had brought to store fish.  We also handed over the water lily which was but a mere leaf when it arrived several years ago and is now a thriving specimen.  We all got very wet and The Builder and I got very muddy, but it was surprisingly good fun.

Yesterday evening, Tabitha and Gareth and Flynn turned up and sorted out the little fish in the back pond.  They have now gone to their new home - not a pond but a well equipped tank.  There will be no further winter iciness for them :-)

Photo courtesy of Tabitha

Today, we took Marlo to the vet for a checkup and then to Freyja and Simon's new house in Heeley Green, which they moved into on Saturday. It's a lovely house, looking out over the Meersbrook valley with views which are beautiful now but which I think will be spectacular in winter when the trees are bare of leaves.  They have a lounge room and kitchen, and upstairs two bedrooms and a small box room which will be an ideal store cupboard.  They also have quite a large garden by local standards, and their very own driveway (which isn't much use to them, since neither of them drives and they don't have a car, but which will be very useful for vehiculared visitors).  Marlo seemed to be very much less stressed about going there than he was when he went last December to the place they were sharing with Simon's brother.  In fact, he seemed quite interested and pottered around and did lots of exploring.  So that's all good.

Photo courtesy of Freyja
Last December he sat under the couch for three days!!

The car is going next door to the other #2 when we go.  Lucy passed her test a short while ago and the car she had bought in anticipation had proved to be very much a lemon.  Our car has its faults but it has been properly looked after and serviced, isn't held together with sealing wax and string, and starts on request. None of these seem to have been the case with the car she had bought.  It's gone away now!

So far everything seems to be coming together quite nicely.  With the sole exception of the selling of the house, which didn't go at yesterday's auction. I'm sure it will sell eventually, but it would be good if it was sooner rather than later!!!

In the meantime, we went with Cally yesterday for a visit to the Tropical Butterfly House and Wildlife Centre on the other side of Sheffield.  Cally has been a few times before.  We have not.  And Cally was very excited to show us all the fun things there were to do.

"Come on, let's go and look at this.  And this.  And this."  "But look, Cally, at this beautiful owl".  "I've seen the owl".  "Then look at this lovely otter."  "I've seen the otter, come and look at this!"  All very well, Cally - but *we* hadn't already seen the owl and the otter and all the other things.  Although it must be said that the things Cally wanted to show us were very funny and also interesting. I especially liked the skellington seated in the outhouse who was less than impressed when we burst in on him :-D

Otters waiting for lunch

Up close with the lemurs 

The red ruffed lemurs came to play too
(This, apparently, is unusual)

Ring tailed lemur lunch all finished

Cally had a great time in the play areas

Then we went home after a lovely few hours.  But I think we wore Cally out

She doesn't usually sleep in the afternoon

Awake again,
and watching the BFG on my iPad
while waiting for her parents to arrive for the fish collection