It's not Eve's, it's mine

Eve's pudding. A treat at the end of a long day. More lovely mild weather, despite a bit of frost overnight. So after a return to bed to catch up on snore-deprived sleep, out in the garden I went. The kids came out to help, and we tidied up the terrace and built up the bonfire to a respectable size. I dug the terrace beds over a bit - adding more sand - and noting that they are certainly much easier to work this time after some proper frost has been at them. Still a bit too much overnight frost forecast to get a proper start on the planting - but next week I hope (subject of course to checking that the moon is in the right place).

The birds, pleasingly, are relying less on the bird table, and only visiting occasionally. Though the blackbirds are arriving more often and fairly efficiently hoovering up all the seeds on the table.

In the sunshine, and putting my back into some digging, it was briefly warm enough to be down to a t-shirt - but temperatures are still only 7 or 8 C at their maximum - not like the tropical spring temperatures 'back home' in Scotland. But briefly today it did feel like warmer times are just around the corner.

The sad news I forgot to report yesterday was that the kids found a dead thrush. Sensibly they didn't touch it, but buried it with sticks. When Mr B asked if it was stiff, Katherine said it wasn't, leading Mr B and I to immediately ask the same question "Are you sure it was dead?" I do hope so.

Mr B has had another enormously frustrating day dealing with an admin matter that should have taken an hour or so, but instead seems to have taken eight days. And on top of that, I made him call EdF as I'm so bored doing it. Mean really, but I do have a (anticipated duration) two hour call to make to France Telecom next week, so fair's fair. Mr B then took over the baton (well, the sharp scraper) and carried on scraping the old paint/plaster/limewash/something we can't identify that's sort of waxy ... off the walls in the guest room. Nearly done now, then there will be plastering once it's warm enough to contemplate that and hopefully in a month or so we will be able to give guests a room that's not really Katherine's.

Anyway, Mr B and I were far too full of the garlickiest Dauphinoise Potatoes I've ever made to try the pudding at pudding time. So I'm off now to dollop out two huge helpings of it and lie on the sofa all evening.

EDIT: Mustn't forget the 'interesting' discussion that this pudding sparked off: when neither of the kids seemed to have heard of 'Eve' as being anyone other than my Australian cousin. I gave my 'quit Sunday-school at age 7' version of the story, with Mr B chipping in with (biblical) accuracy where necessary. They seemed underwhelmed and decided she should have known the serpent was a 'figment of her imagination' (Katherine) or 'a snake - I mean, who listens to snakes?' (Conor). From the mouths of babes.