Cats, baking, gardening: All I need is The Archers omnibus and I've got the typical British suburban Sunday afternoon

I'm exhausted. I've spent 2 hours in the garden, chopping away at the brambles that are growing lightning fast, dead-heading geraniums, and cutting back the tree out front that is creating something of a hazard along the road. It's an overcast, sultry day and I'm beginning to ache. I haven't even started mowing the lawn yet -- I'll wait till my bread's finished baking and I've recovered a little. As a special treat, I let the cats into the conservatory for only the second time. They're delighted: New areas to explore, new furniture to destroy, new clothing to play with. They're particularly enamoured of the clothes rack; I hope their obvious pleasure at sitting amongst our damp underwear isn't evidence of some kind of kinky fetish.

Come out, come out, wherever you are!



That's better:



You too, Nin.




Most of the time, however, they sit at the window, watching me slave away. It's rather sweet, really. They're also displaying certain territorial tendencies. When Shin spots a bird out of the window, her tail starts moving and she makes this weird "ack-ack" noise in her throat. While I was in the garden, the blackbird started his warning signal; I looked round, and the rather large neighbourhood cat jumped over the wall into the bottom of our garden. In the conservatory behind me, Nin and Shin came over to the window, staring menacingly at this intruder. Despite the fact that they were no real threat to him, our big-boned buddy decided to push off. I foresee some battles when we let the girls out in a month or so. Till then, they'll just have to focus on hunting down our socks and pants.