Chipolatas, roasted Mediterranean veg, jacket potatoes

I’m not sure what time it was, but I surfaced from sleep to find it was still mostly dark. From somewhere in the house came a “mrow-ow?” from a tabby someone who wanted attention and / or breakfast. I stroked and shushed her, and went back to sleep.

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I’m not sure what time it was, but it was slightly lighter, and “mrow-ow?” was back. I stroked and shushed her, and went back to sleep.

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I’m not sure how many times I repeated this loop, but the fourth or fifth time around, the “mrow-ow?” was joined by mum informing me that Suki was hanging around. As if I hadn’t noticed.

Of course, faced with the requested bowl of cat food, Suki took half a dozen mouthfuls and promptly lost interest. Because of course she did.

Suki fed, mum went out into the garden, and rapidly came back to inform me that “we have a problem”. It has been really windy here recently, so I immediately thought of the likely culprits: a tree branch? A piece of guttering? Part of the greenhouse?

Thankfully, it turned out to be a side branch of one of the overly large shrubs in the garden: longer than I am tall, but not a major disaster. Mum, naturally, fussed and worried about it until I agreed to go round to our next door neighbour to ask him to cut it down.

I don’t know how old my neighbour is, and I don’t want to embarrass him (or me) by guessing, but he’s an older gentleman. He’s still active and handy, though, and I barely got back inside the house before he was round with a pair of loppers, cutting off the offending branch and chopping it into (garden) bin-sized pieces. Thank you, Mr Neighbour!

Disorderly branch sorted, I dragged myself into the kitchen to make the banana cake I’ve been promising mum since Monday. I was just about to put it into the oven when mum appeared in the kitchen doorway, wanting to know when I’m going to fix her CD player.

I negotiated that one, got the cake into the oven, and mum asked when I’m going to dispose of her car. Then asked “are we having food tonight?”, her favourite way of expressing a desire for me to provide dinner soon, please.

The dinner I provided was one of mum’s favourites. She looked at the tray, freshly out of the oven, and said “now this is the sort of food I like!” I will ignore that insult to my usual cooking and instead just be pleased she enjoyed her meal.

Then we had banana cake, and I discovered that the last working part of our dying freezer is no longer working enough to keep ice cream in a frozen state, so I had mine plain. It’s a touch dry, but the flavour is good.

Tomorrow I need to work out how to move a freezer full of ice so I can get at the plug behind it to turn it off, and begin the long, soggy process of turning it into a freezer empty of ice. (And everything else.)

In the meantime, there’s “nothing on” tv so I get to watch some sport. Suki is intermittently fascinated by the snooker – all those small moving things! – although on balance she prefers a nature documentary, I guess the same way I prefer a good cooking programme: you may never get to taste what they’re showing, but it’s fun watching the process.

And on that note, goodnight. May your branches stay attached to their trees, and your mornings be free of “mrow-ow?”