A Sunday Ramble

This was going to be a Wednesday Ramble, then a Friday one, then a Saturday one... someone keeps stealing my days. I'm sure yesterday was Tuesday!

Actually it's been a moderately busy week. First and most important, we've had a couple of trips to the vet, Not for me (though some people think that might be a better option than the hospital!) but for Samantha, our black and white cat. She's been in a scrap. And lost. Seriously lost. As a result she's lost the sight in one eye and may have to lodse the ey itself. You can tell she's unwell because she lets me pick her up and put eye drops in and that's something she'd normally run a mile from. You would have thought she'd have had more sense at the age of 16 than to get into fights - Teenagers, Huh!

It's been quite good weather this week, sunny and not too cold, so I've managed to get out in the garden doing some clearing and tidying - the first serious work of the New Year.

I've also lost a few days to ill health. A cold and also my usual heart/lung/nervous system rubbish. Although the cold never fully developed it all helped to drag me down. Overdosing on Vitamin C stopped the cold from ever really getting serious enough to be called man-flu.

One sometimes plays the game of who would you dine with if you could pick anyone from any time. I always pick Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain as two of my dinner guests and after that it tends to vary. I can't ever recall picking David Attenborough but I really should have him as number one and always present. I've just watched part of a series on Madagascar and another programme set in Madagascar about the extinct Elephant Bird. This latter included many clips and stories from David Attenborough's first visit there in the 1960s for Zoo Quest. He has so many great stories I could listen to him for hours and hours on end.Madagascar has cut down 80% of its forests but it was really heartening to hear that in order to join up some of the surviving pieces of forest they have planted a million trees in the last three years.

I've decided another person I'd love to have for dinner is Phil Harding (the long-haired one from Time Team). I imagine he'd be hilarious as well as instructive. Who would you have?