Prickles and points

Claire and Nick came over yesterday, all the way from Sheffield. Nick came to do the pointing (repairing the bits that hold the bricks in the back wall together) and Claire so that we could go on inventing new ways of changing the world while having fun and laughing a lot. We've been doing that for well over forty years, and boy, are we good at it. In the evening lovely hedgehog came to see what was going on and escaped again, if you'll pardon the expression, sharpish. It's shy. Perhaps I need to give it a little cat food to encourage it.

We spent this evening at my sister's. The rain has been slooshing down so it's cooler than of late and she had the fire blazing away in the stove. She too has a garden hedgehog, or possibly two, in her cottage garden. (You wait for years for a hedgehog, then they all turn up at once.) In spite of the lure of a little dish of something, the cottage hedgehog didn't appear in its usual spot.

I apologise to her cats. I took some bubbles to blow, thinking that the cats would enjoy chasing them. Cats watched with mild interest. 'Move a bit closer', said Helen. So I did, and the cats were out of there like ferrets up a drainpipe. Was it the smell of soap that put them off?

After a delightful evening, we opened the back door to leave. Snuggled by the fence was the sweetest little hedgehog. Result!