First baby picture

Am I getting boring yet?! Image sneaked out from Callie's mobile phone from hospital.

Sunny sonny day!

I have planted my autumn fruiting raspberries today. A ritual act as at 6:03am today Callie gave birth to a healthy baby BOY!
He was entirely unexpected as she had been told that 'he was a she' (to quote Lou Reed) when she had her scan.
Luckily she had steered away from buying anything pink and so most of the things that she has are gender neutral.
Whenever we eat those raspberries we will always remember that they were planted on the day that baby no name was born.
A happy, beautiful day!

Got muddy, done some sowing!

I have just got back from the allotment - aching and happy.

I have spent the last couple of hours digging in manure and mushroom compost and pulling out the never ending stream of bindweed roots.

But I got two rows of early potatoes, two rows of broad beans; three rows of peas, parsnips, radishes and beetroot in the ground, so I feel really satisfied.

Tomorrow I need to take up some more manure and get the raspberry canes planted that I have heeled in the garden here all winter.

All of this is a great distraction from worrying about Callie who is going into hospital this evening to have the baby induced.

Bye bye Magnus

We got back from a lovely weekend in Brighton on Sunday - having spent time with the gorgeous Callie and her big bump and enjoyed the gig of the year so far - Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA orchestra (great review by Nigel on his blog).

When we got home we were struck by the confidence of Gladys, our smallest cat, but just put it down to her being pleased that her humans were back home. By the time that we went to bed, we had still not seen out 15 year old ginger boy Magnus, and my anxiety levels had risen significantly!

He still did not appear on Monday, so we spent the evening leafleting the area, ringing the Cats Protection League etc. A couple of people nearby rang up and invited us to search their gardens and sheds. Tuesday morning - still no sign of him. I was still clinging to the hope that he might have got shut in a shed somewhere, but in reality my intuition was telling me that we had lost him.

We did some more leafleting on Tuesday evening, and just as we got home, we got a phone call from someone around the corner to say that they had found him on the side of the road on Saturday morning, and whilst it was clear that nothing could be done for him, they had taken his body to the vets - which turned out to be the one that we use.

He had a character that was bigger than him! He was his own cat - fickle, unpredictable, but a really special part of our family. He had a special bond with Callie who says that should the baby turn out to be a boy, she'll call it Magnus!

The other cats? They are more relaxed certainly (as Magnus was the master of launching unprovoked attacks on all of them), and they are enjoying the increase in size of their food portions!

We'll miss him though, even if we will have a few less scars as a result of his absence!