Flying Visit

The day began perfectly at 4am, with the most amazing caterwauling outside my bedroom window. I swear there were words in it. At least one of my cats was stalking or being stalked by a fox or another cat. I went down into the garden to try to lure him in, to no avail. (Remember this is 4am!)

I go back to bed. As I close my eyes, certain in the knowledge that I am unlikely to doze off again because I will be worrying in case there is a feline injury in the offing, I realise there are flashing lights in my eyelids. Great - a migraine aura. Two painkillers later I was struggling to go to sleep, while trying to fix Bobby in my brain. Neither worked.

At 6.30am it was time to get up and get ready for work. I took two more painkillers, fed the creatures and myself, then set off in my car. Half a mile up the road, I suddenly realised I had not put all the parrots back in their cages. If I wanted to come home to birds with all their toes, I needed to go back and shut them all in. This meant I was late for work.

So all day my head has felt as if it belonged to someone else - and I've wished it did!

I also discovered that a teaching assistant who claims to be qualified as an English teacher does not know the meaning of the word "tenacious". She didn't understand "caterwauling" either, though to me the word sounds pretty self-explanatory. The ignorance of the young staggers me (yesterday I had to tell my students who Nelson Mandela is).

If I don't get to your blog today, forgive me.