Today, I mostly did housework.  So virtuous, darlings, and yet so dull.  I’ve got a busy few weeks coming up, so reckon that a good clean now will last a bit, apart from hoovering up dog hairs and the daily stuff that has to be done.

That reminds me, Ben was a Good Boy this morning.  I took him to the vet’s – he’d had his annual vaccination a few weeks ago, but there’s a new one for a different strain of leptospirosis and, with all the water round here (and rats, can’t help that with fields all around) and that needed a booster.  I took him in and someone had two black dogs, labrador crosses, who barked and jumped about when they saw Ben.  And he was beautifully behaved, wagged his tail but didn’t pull forward and sat when I asked him to.  He responds much better to ‘down’ than to ‘sit’, by the way, which means I say ‘Ben down’ quite a lot.  Oh dear.  So I was very pleased with him.  He’s settled down so much in the past few months, he’s much easier to have about when people come round as he doesn’t get overexcited any more.  And he’s quite incurious about the tortoise enclosure in the porch, too.  Oh, and though I had to lift his front feet up into the car, he then jumped in, rather than having to be lifted – I can only carry him half at a time, he’s so heavy.

When I went to let the chickens in this evening, I was two short.  So I went out again a bit later in case they were waiting, and they weren’t – but then I saw one sitting in the long grass.  I picked her up, to her indignation, because she was sitting on eight eggs.  Oh dear.  I can’t have chicks this year, I’ve already got too many hens.  I’ve put them in water, they all seem fresh, but I’m not sure how long they’ve been there, so I’d rather use them in baking than to cook lightly for an eggy meal.  But there are so many, how much cake do we need?

The indoor run for the tortoises is ready and I brought all three of them indoors today, to see how they got on.  It’s large enough that they haven’t noticed each other yet.  And it rained this afternoon, so it was good that they weren’t huddled under cover.

It’s been a sociable weekend – to Dunwich on Friday with Charlotte, as I said the other day, then over to spend Saturday evening with Weeza and family.  I read the children their bedtime story, and Gus chose a splendid book called Harvey’s Hideout, which had been Weeza or Al’s when they were little.  It’s about two muskrats, a brother and sister.  He’s a pesky little brother and Muriel is a bossy big sister – it stands the test of time.  On Sunday, Roses and Indigo came for lunch and there’s an amusing picture on Facebook, with his fine tshirt, which has an open-mouthed, toothy shark, saying ‘Om nom nom’ whilst I’m standing up close and personal to Indigo – and the shark’s mouth is in line with my face.  Indigo is at least 15 inches taller than I am.  I’d put it up here, but to download it onto my photo album would mean giving the dreaded FB access to all my pictures.  Not that there’s anything amiss about my photos, but – well, I’m reluctant.

It all seems to be bad news around here, in the last couple of days I’ve heard of three lovely people with terminal cancer.  It really does put any personal problems into perspective – all of them are younger than I am, one by twenty years.

When Paul the Fish called in this morning, I felt a need for self-indulgence.  So I bought lobster.  And I didn’t feel like doing anything clever with it, so I simply made some mayonnaise to go with it, which turned out to be so delicious that it was used instead of butter on the runner beans that were the first course.

My mother, every late winter, used to greet the first purple sprouting broccoli with the happy observation “They’re my favourite veg.” Runner beans are mine, I think.  Lovely.