It hasn't rained yet.

Nor has the baby been born, but thank you for asking.

I am quite tired and I have a cold, and I have been working very hard all day. So please excuse me if I do not scintillate like a twinkly little star tonight. I will later of course, when flirting with my husband, because that gives meaning to my day.

I cycled in to town and down to the Co-op, where I haven't shopped for weeks and I had, as a result, run out of a lot of things. I shop most days, but once in a while it's necessary to stock up. Furthermore, we were out of beer. There is a limit to how much beer can be fitted into a pair of panniers. So I agreed with the Sage that, at a given time, he would meet me at the shop and load the car up with shopping. I'm sure this is not the point of cycling to the shops, but there we go. He had to go out anyway.

It had been a tiring day and I bought apple strudel. We don't usually have puddings and if we do, I make them. But tonight we had bought apple strudel. It was symbolic of a need, somehow, even if now my mouth has a coating of fat. It tasted good at the time. We also had fish. And baked potatoes and french beans.

I might write tomorrow, but if I don't it will be because the baby has not been born and I am losing interest in writing about anything else. Don't tell me you've noticed? I am completely distracted.

I'm going to read the papers. They will not cheer me, not one bit. I will probably spend some time staring at the crossword and filling in seven clues, then doing all the sudoku very quickly because it's not that interesting, then staring at the crossword again. Saturday nights, aren't they perfectly lovely?

I have the Sage. The answer is yes. Potentially.

Update --- the evening has improved. The Sage just found a nest of chicks, whose mother had naughtily laid away. I knelt on a bed of holly leaves and reached under a prickly horizontally-growing dwarf conifer and brought out ten blonde chicks and their complacent mummy. They are tucked away safely in a coop.