Well, after a relative trouble free period, I managed to get into strife again last night. This time it wasn’t my fault but the cat’s. I was in the kitchen preparing tea, I should have been visiting my friend, Maddie - but something turned up, as is often the case when you make arrangements so we needed to rearrange. When in walked the cat with a sparrow in her mouth, and it was still alive. I shut the kitchen door and tried to get it off her – you know the sort of thing – bend down and make a ch ch ch noises. The little sod was having none of it. She had caught it and as far as she was concerned, she was keeping it – she had only brought it in to show me after all. She headed under the breakfast bar and I shot under after her. I grabbed her and started to back out again with her swearing for all she was worth. Unfortunately, I misjudged the coming back out part and banged my head on the edge of the wooden top. I may have spoken a few words quite loudly, which I suppose could come under the heading of swearing, but in my defence it had bloody hurt. I dropped the cat, with the bird still in her mouth and grabbed my head instead. My few well chosen words were heard by Himself who was outside and on hearing my distress, the stupid sod came in and left the door open. The cat seeing her one chance of freedom made a run for it and escaped with the bird still in her mouth. Which didn’t pleased me one bit and I told Himself so. Why, when it is so bloody obvious do people insist on asking stupid questions? Had I hurt myself, he said. No, I was holding on to my head and swearing like a trooper just for the bloody fun of it. That got me a Look, but he chose to ignore the sarcasm. Let him have a look to see if I’d cut it, he said. I declined his offer with a few more well chosen word. I didn’t want him to look at it, for a start it hurt too much for him to poke at. After a while I did let him look, it wasn’t cut – just sore with a small lump on top. I’d have been OK if I’d have left it there, but no I had to go outside to look for the cat. Friend to all animals, that’s me. She was sat by the shed with the bird still in her mouth. So off I trot up the garden to try to start negotiations – but she was having none of it and moved away. So in a fit of temper I picked up a stone and threw it at her. OK, I throw like a woman. That is to say the stone went nowhere near the cat. In fact, it went in a totally different direction, straight through the shed window – making a nice hole in the glass in the process.

Now if I’d have been trying to break the shed window, I’d have probably hit the cat. Even that didn’t really cause my downfall – it was the swearing that followed it that did that. If the new neighbours hadn’t heard me already through the kitchen wall, I’ve have been very surprised it they didn’t hear me chasing the cat down the garden. I have a very wide vocabulary when it comes to swear words, and I was well and truly pissed off with the cat. She dropped the bird and shot over the fence. I picked the bird up and the sodding thing died in my hand. Talk about ungrateful. Himself was far from happy with my language and insisted we go upstairs - where his hand had a fair few well chosen words with my backside.

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That’s the trouble with animals – they rarely understand that you’re trying to rescue them. It was just same with the crow – yes that's right, a few years ago I helped save one of those. We had a ginger tom at the time which unfortunately got killed by a car, but that’s another story and I’m not going into it now. Anyway, I went up the garden to let the ducks out one morning and found the cat and crow in the duck run. The crow was putting up a good fight and the cat decided that it would be better to wash himself instead. Now in case you don’t know, crows are fairly big birds and this one had hurt its wing. Not broken, but it was causing him a few problem with its take off. So being the kind hearted person that I am – I decided the best thing to do was carry it to the field and put it in the hedge. That was fine in principle, what I hadn’t taken into account was the fact that the bird didn’t recognise me as its saviour. As I picked it up, it stuck it’s claws into my hand and attached its beak to my finger – and I can tell you now it drew blood. Lots of blood, and it bloody hurt – but I’m nothing if not determined. I was rescuing the flipping thing it whether it like it or not – so with it still attached to my hand I walked across the road to the field and set it free. I then went home, washed the blood from my hand and stuck a plaster on it. It made everyone laugh at work – notice I said laugh and not surprised. They know me well. I was the one that went into the workshops everyday over Christmas the one year to feed and water a pigeon that had flown inside and refused to come out. Which it did enventually do, the first day all the kids came back - the holiday was over as far as it was concerned. Simon, our first aider, asked when was the last time I’d had a tetanus injection? How the hell did I know, years ago probably. Well I should go and get one, he said. Nah...I’d be fine – I don’t like injections - who does? But he kept going on and on about it, so in the end I agreed to ring the doctors and check with them. I explained to the lady on reception what had happened. I could hear her telling someone else in the background – who was laughing by the way, what had happened. She came back to the phone – Yes, I did need to come in for a tetanus injection. I could come straight away if I wanted. I didn’t want to at all, but anything to shut Simon up, I just insisted that he come with me – I then made him hold my hand while the nurse put the needle in my arm and I can tell you now I gripped his hand very tightly – that would teach the bugger to think he was the male version of Florence Nightingale.

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It took ages to get into work today - there was a major gas leak in town and the roads were in gridlock - everyone trickled in late. We all rely on cars to much I'm afraid. Not that we have much choice, the public transport around here is awful. Oh well, back to it I suppose.