New Toy For Speedy.

9.00 this morning there was still a foggy haze over the tops of the hills which left sparkling dew drops in one of the few cobwebs in the garden. It burnt off quite quickly leaving another very hot day. By the afternoon patchy fog had returned sending bursts of cool air to refresh us as we sat out in the back garden.

It was shopping day for me and I came home with a couple of good buys. First was this toy I bought for Speedy. I've never bought toys for our cats before, country cats don't need them but I felt sad for Speedy being stuck in his bucket for so long and even now that he doesn't need to wear it he's not allowed out. He really enjoys his evening sessions with his feathered thing on a stick so I took a chance on this toy. Apart from a trapped ball which spins around there's a hollow for catnip and the combination seems to work for Speedy.

My other good buy was a metal curtain  with all the fittings; finials, rings, joins and brackets in Laura Ashley. Original price £210, today's price £20! At a maximum length of 3.8m it should do either for the window and door in the dinning area or for the window and door in the front hall. Unfortunately the rest of the things in the shop were not so generously reduced. Some nice table lamp bases consisting of 4 glass tennis ball sized spheres were still over £50, too much for me. My final shopping stop was at B&Q to check out kitchen units. It's all very well seeing stuff on-line but now that cupboards doors are no longer solid wood but a combination of chipboard or mdf with a covering stuck on who knows what the quality is like? I'm almost tempted to buy second-hand doors and get them professionally sprayed. I'm not sure if I'm a lot wiser after today's look but at least I got hold of two brochures. One shows the different ranges much as the website but the other gives all the size options and prices which is what I really wanted. Now to check out any other suppliers that have stores locally. One thing we won't do is use the installation option as they subcontract out anyway. An extra layer of payment and barriers to work through if there are problems. We'll use our local chaps for the installation instead.

Finally - is this the start of a wheelie bin saga? ('Scuse reflection.) This grubby, unnumbered black bin had been sitting on the grass outside the left-hand neighbour's house since bin day which was Tuesday last week. Yesterday evening the neighbour who'd obviously had enough of looking at the bin went and knocked on the door of the corner house (to the right) but they weren't at home. So she wheeled the bin up to the corner of the grass nearest to that house which then put it outside my neighbour on the right's garden. That neighbour wasn't having any of that and took the bin to the centre of the grass where it now sits. Looking at the possible owners' house yesterday I saw that the upstairs and downstairs curtains were drawn and wondered if they had gone away on holiday, as many people are now doing. However the curtains were open today so that theory wasn't correct. Oh what small things occupy our minds when we're stuck at home.