Mending

After yesterday's battle, Shark and Tiger have fled to various parts of the kingdom in self-imposed exile. Squirrel is munching her way through several bowls of breakfast cereal. And mummy Grit gets started on mending a garden chair she put in the garage c. 1992 saying, 'One day I'll mend that chair when I get around to it'.

Dig, meanwhile, busies himself making a bat detector. This involves laying out small items of electrical thingys over all the tables and chairs in the schoolroom. Plus a fair bit of the floor. And on the steps of a stepladder propped here several months ago when Dig promised to put up a light. I'm not sure why the light's still on the floor in a box, but perhaps one day he'll get around to that too.

Anyway, with electrical components spread out over the entire room, and Dig saying Don't touch that and Don't touch that either, there's not much for the warring ladies to do, so they start to take over various parts of the garden as defensive positions.

Tiger opts for the tree. She can clamber up here to the second or third branch, despite repeated cautions about falling out one day when she's eaten too much pizza. Shark takes herself off to the swings, which is pretty difficult, given the fact that they're now encased in wisteria. Squirrel stays indoors, guarding the kitchen. Dig sits in the middle of the schoolroom with a soldering iron, surrounded by electrical thingys. And I go downstairs, where I've got a small workbench furnished with a sewing machine and a couple of hammers. The sewing machine and hammers are usually interchangeable as far as I'm concerned and both do pretty well with the garden chair.

And this, more or less, is how the day proceeds. Every so often Dig gets in a child to learn about making bat detectors and every so often someone comes along to see how the chair is getting along. Shark drops in on Tiger's tree to see how the unicorn hammock is developing, and Tiger goes down to look at Shark's new house in the wisteria. Everyone pops in on Squirrel to ask if they can get to the fruit bowl and bread basket.

It seems to work well, because with everyone engaged quietly in something else, everyone can stay out of everyone else's way.

And this means that in the evening we can have that barbeque.