Our dear friend Daphne came to stay for a couple of nights. She was one of the very few non-family friends whom Tim and I invited to our wedding, she’s that close. Russell knew her from a little girl, when she moved to this area and she’s also Ro’s godmother. She lives near Canterbury now. We all went to her 80th birthday party last year.

She went to call on a friend this morning – he lives in the house where she grew up – and she’s just phoned to say she arrived home safely. She didn’t ring earlier as she knew I was going to be at a meeting this evening.

Yesterday, when I went to feed the cats and chickens, the sky was dark and it was clearly going to rain soon – which it did, torrentially, but I was safely back in the house by then. Hurrying to feed Hop and cover her and Polly’s coop with a tarp, I forgot to take the eggs in with me and went back for them today. Empty shells scattered about. I was sure it wasn’t a fox and the feral cats wouldn’t have done it, so probably a hedgehog. Wink went to feed the cats tonight as I was filling up chicken feeders and drinkers and she came back to me, saying there seemed to be a dead animal. She’d had injections into her eyes this afternoon, so her sight was somewhat blurred. I went to check. A large hedgehog was curled up on the ground near the cat feeding station. It was breathing, so just fast asleep, presumably sleeping off the eggs it had eaten and all set to polish off the cat food later. I can’t begrudge it to a hedgehog, though. It’s very welcome. A couple of years ago, when we had a thieving hedgehog, I used to put an egg and a dish of cat food out for it every evening.

We have so few insects nowadays, I was even pleased, yesterday, when I saw a couple of cabbage white butterflies.

We’re off to London first thing tomorrow. I must go to bed. Goodnight.