It was scaffolders at dawn again, but today wearing their hi-vis vests. I just let them through and went back to sleep. This is now the view from my bedroom window:



So I'm clearly better off than the poor soul who moved into the basement on Monday and now has every last scrap of light blocked, but no morning sun for a while.

I did plodding through tasks for a lot of the day, most of which came to nothing for a variety of reasons of no significance, which I didn't really notice at the time so that had little effect on my mood - I was still ticking off actions taken. I managed to get a massive pot of lentils, veg and chorizo on the stove before I keeled over, enough for tomorrow's dinner as well.

Here's a photo of my stalker:



She's Ms Disgruntled of Casa Notbob these days - following me about, yowling indignantly and generally being a pain. She's the only cat I've ever paid for - well she and her short-lived predecessor, and he was a pain as well. His thing was getting on surfaces and pushing objects off them, not all the time but every now and then, when we'd forgotten. And he used to eat pages of books that he'd knocked off the bookcase behind the sofa. He was a right fucker - made himself at home all over the place, especially in the winter. I'd drive home from work and see him sitting to attention in someone else's house, someone who was home and had the heating on. Got run over. Bob's much more timid that that, maybe because she's tiny, and spends most of her time indoors expecting me to interact with her and I don't want to. I want to be home alone.

Don't think I don't know how much I'd miss her if she was gone, but she's not, she's racing up and down from the living room to the kitchen and back at two or three minute intervals and yes, I did go and check that she has food and water and can get in and out through the kitchen window.

Dunno why I'm rambling on about her.

YD and GS are here - well, GS is at his mate's for the night and only now do I realise that I failed to interrogate him as to his intentions, but I'll assume he remembers all the shit I said before and that he is a sensible kid.

Our family record is not good for bringing boys unscathed through the teenage years - Son and one nephew acquired criminal records as long as your arm, another nephew has never managed to motivate himself to do anything, at any stage of his life, and the last is a shit hot local DJ, but with three out of four we've floundered, as parents, aunts and uncles, and not helped them make better choices, so I worry a lot about GS, losing his mother in the way that he has. I know there's nothing I can do to change the awfulness of that, but I'd like it to be said, in the future, "That was a terrible, terrible time, but thanks to X,Y and/or Z, something else happened as well (a good thing)." Don't know what - I don't trust my instincts.

He spends most of his time with headphones on, eyes down, on some device or another. Whenever I see what he's doing it all seems pretty innocuous and he's not seeking to do whatever it is in private so I'm not (that) concerned about content. I know it's distraction, I do enough of that myself, and as distraction goes it's one of the better ones. Not as convenient as throwing yourself a hundred per cent into your school work; not as devastating as heavy drug use or becoming nasty and bitter.

Anyway.

Meanwhile YD is mastering the art of bunting for decorating the yurt at the wedding - that just sounds so wanky now I see it written down, but fuck it, it is what it is. She was going to buy it until she saw the price - now she's making loads, with a view to selling it on later. She brought it all down with her - she's made seventy five double-sided triangles, mainly out of our old clothes, which she sat and turned right way out, then started to starch and press them:



This is her distraction. Good for her.

Today I am grateful for: YD, GS and SIL2 who drove them down then went home again; the wherewithal to produce a yummy dinner, which is not always the case; visit from SC this morning - plans for garden starting to take shape; the brilliance of GS meeting and getting on so well with a kid at a festival that lives round the corner from me; sitting on a wall in the sunshine drinking coffee while a really good busker played reggae. Oh, and news from dear Manfromvenus

Sleep well, my dearios.