Supervisor

For once it was R who had an early appointment in Stratford today rather than me, but I tagged along for the cake ride. While he was in the dentist for a routine check-up, I walked along to the cemetery to see if it had any potential as a wildlife site, but was disappointed to discover that every green surface was mowed, strimmed, pruned and tidied to the point of sterility. At least I was able to congratulate myself on not having made a special trip.

On our way home we detoured round to the garden centre at Twyford, partly to pick up supplies of bird and hedgehog food, and partly so that I could start the process of replacing the plants we've lost from the garden over the winter. This robin is a well-known resident of the garden centre, where it's simply called The Robin, as if there's only one - though I don't think that can be the case, because last year a nest was built among the bedding plants in the covered zone (customers being warned by a sign, placed nearby by the staff, not to approach too close), and I believe a clutch of eggs was hatched. But the thing about robins, of course, is that in the absence of any particular distinguishing features such as leg rings or discoloured feather patches, they all look pretty much the same to the human eye, so counting them isn't an easy task. I'd be surprised if a site as large as this, with plenty of shelter and food on tap, didn't support several breeding pairs.

Back at home I returned to a project that's been occupying an annoying amount of my bandwidth for the past few weeks: namely, trying to track down my Oyster card. Since realising that it had gone missing I've turned the house upside down and inside out looking for it, including searching in places where it couldn't realistically have been, just so that I could say I'd checked them. By dinner time I was ready to admit defeat, and was one mouse click away from reporting the stupid thing missing to TfL and paying for a replacement, when I decided to re-check the backpack in which it's always lived, just one absolutely last and final time. Having emptied the entire contents of the bag onto the floor, and got R to help me go through its various pockets, without apparent success, I was grumpily refilling it when I thought I'd maybe go through my purse again.... just in case.... And there it was, in a pocket of the purse I don't remember ever noticing before, let alone using.

As I did the Crash Bandicoot dance around the kitchen, R commented that now he knew how happy it made me to find something I'd lost, he thought he might start randomly hiding my belongings so I could have the pleasure of tracking them down again. In the film version of our marriage, I will be played by Ingrid Bergman, and the role of R will be taken by Charles Boyer.