As always, once you get to halfway through the school holidays and you are just settling into a lazy rhythm suddenly the days seems to gather momentum and slip away faster and faster, or is it just me?

We are going to house-sit in Knighton again for Kate, no tortoise this time though.  Tiberius has gone to be looked after by experts, not that I did it wrong last time but this time they had room for him at the Tortoise-arium or whatever a boarding kennel for Tortoises is called and when they booked him in and the experts checked him over it turns out that he, is a girl!  He was too small to tell before but now it is definitely confirmed Tiberius is now Tibby.

Funny how both their she animals, have boys names.  Derek the little she cat and now the Tortoise.  My grand daughters should be grateful that they got their pretty names before this trend started.

So we are really only going so that my Other Half can commune with the cat for a week and she, as always will be happy to be spoilt rotten  and be queen of all she surveys, as is of course her right, as all cats know.

And when we get back it will be Bank Holiday weekend and then back to school.  Every year at about this time I question the wisdom of deciding to carry on, if only for a token one day a week and not gracefully retiring before they find me slumped over a pile of books.  But then it helps to keep me grounded.  Once a week I actually know what day and even better what date it is.

And even better and nicer I enjoy the children’s company and sharing books with them and sometimes bits of their lives.  Between the intricacies of learning to read we gossip about this, that and the other, or perhaps ‘ships and shoes and sealing wax’ would be a more appropriate way of saying that.

And have you noticed, there is a touch of Autumn in the air and the nights are perceptibly drawing in now.  Soon the media will be heralding Christmas and I shall be moaning about the dark nights and looking forward to the shortest day in December when the days will slowly begin to lengthen again!