Sneaking Ten Minutes....

....to blog today before I have to knuckle down to some serious deadline meeting for the press agency.

Took Merlin and Cassie to the vets this morning for their boosters. Merlin, apparently, is underweight (despite the fact that he never stops eating). Cassie is massively overweight (well, we knew that) and needs to urgently lose some. Easier said than done when we rarely see her eating in the first place, and she's often sick straight after she's eaten anyway. I suspect there's rather more to her obesity than 'cat who eats too much', but for now we'll follow the vet's instructions (like we weren't already) and see how it goes.

Back from the vets we decided to make the most of our last day of freedom for some time - between pending health appointments for various members of the family (dozens of 'em!!....well, seems so anyway), work deadlines, the seasonal business rush and the dire need to fit in some education, it's going to be a busy run up to Christmas from this week on. So Emily and I took ourselves off to the cinema to see Nanny Mcphee - yes, probably the last people in the country to do so. It was absolutely brilliant, we both loved it to bits and it is, in Emily's words, "miles better than Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus" (you don't say??). Emily has been chunnering away ever since about the differences between the book and the film (of which there are, um, very, very many). She's read up to chapter six of the book this last couple of days. Jon has already read it to her once, but she wanted to re-read it herself, which is pretty good going, I reckon. She can't decide now whether she likes the book or the film version best!

Straight from the cinema we went swimming for a bit, which was OK if you like freezing to bits. Wish they'd do something about the temperature in there!!

And so home, and it's deadline time for me. That should take care of tonight and tomorrow, then Wednesday we need to clear out the stockroom - ahem, I mean Grandad's bedroom :-))) - ready for his return from Canada. And Emily will have lots of baking and cooking to do to feed our (hopefully hungry) guests!