Monday

It was a bit of a restless night last night for all of us. Even though I tried to have an early night, I was awake again at 11:30 trying to work out why Pearl was barking. She had apparently refused all of S's offers to go into M's room and now something was upsetting or unsettling her. We didn't find out what it was but she seemed to settle after that - but now I'm not sure if we put her into M's room then or at 3:30am. Hmmm - the important thing is that I let her out this morning before I left for work.

I can see clearly now the rain has gone. That was the song Mi kept starting to sing at the Markets yesterday and it is certainly the right song for today. Brilliant sunshine - and lots of it. But it’s supposed to be fairly cold tonight - reminding us that, yes, we are officially in Winter now.

Trivia tonight and while Winners are Grinners - this week it wasn't us. We placed near the bottom of the pack - not the very bottom though - but, luckily, it was still good fun and we didn't spend too much time going over where we lost the points - because there were so many places where we did - mostly in two categories - Sports and This and That. We may have done better in Sports if S had been with us but he was off at a cycling meet so wasn't a starter this evening. Ah well, just as all the bits fell into place a fortnight ago (when we scored 75 out of a possible 80) and we had the right questions and picked the right bonus rounds, so they fell out of place tonight ... and we will be a smaller team next week as N and S are off to France for a month!

We punctuated tonight's Trivia by going out the front door of the Club to watch the progress of tonight's partial eclipse of the moon. N is currently doing astronomy with her students and had urged them to go outside this evening to see the eclipse - so she was doing it and we wanted to see as well. It was good she was there because we thought the eclipse was tomorrow night and we would have missed it completely. Now we're just hanging out for the Transit of Venus (whatever that is) on Wednesday!

There has been word from the travellers. They have arrived safely in Moscow and will be more in touch when they find Internet (their hotel doesn't appear to have it). It's amazing when you think of it - these days you can track flights in real time as they travel halfway around the globe, and text message from Russia - and in the olden days you could make a phone call which sounded like an echo chamber after a trip that might have taken weeks ... how far we've come!

The furries seem to be coping with M's absence. Pearl is trotting the ball around with her as if she remembers that we did a lot of that when M was last away a couple of year's ago. She does have the tendency to be a little naughty though, especially around the cat cookies, so we are going to put our minds to a solution - how to keep the cookies within Beazley's reach, but out of Pearl's?

The Australian share market took a bit of a dive today, mostly as a reaction to overseas pressures. There's some speculation that this, together with a slowing retail sector, will lead the Reserve Bank to drop interest rates again tomorrow rather than leaving them static. They're only talking about a quarter of a percent but every little bit helps these days.

The cats all co-operated and came in for lockdown but then Beaz wanted to go out again - so we let him, knowing he would meow and/or knock at the cat flap when he wanted to come in later - which he did. Pearl didn't want to go into M's room again so we are going to have to work out what to do about that. I know the plan is that we have one animal-free room in the house but perhaps that can wait until M comes back. I think Pearl is missing M and is lonely and that's why she doesn't want to sleep in her room - and while Maggie is sleeping in there, I don't know that she's company enough for Pearl. We shall see what happens in the coming nights and if she shows any inclination at all to go in.

As I took the rubbish and recycling up,this evening (Pearl came for a ride in "The Beast" before she and I took a walk down to B's) I waved to L on the way there, and the way back. He's still looking thin, but he's lost that gaunt, haunted look now - and he was even smiling. It's good to see. They had a get-together there yesterday to remember M's birthday. That's the thing about losing someone - there's always something there to remind you - although that's not necessarily a bad thing.