Most of the last week was spent doing things around the house – painting railings and outside walls, topping up plants, etc.

The weather has generally been lousy – not a lot of sunshine or warmth. Had a couple of bad storms – really hard rain, lightening and thunder one night that Mo had to bark at, and a fierce wind storm all day long a couple of days ago – even the pigeons took shelter.

The bell tower is chiming once again, although it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes slow. It doesn’t matter in the mornings but can be a bit annoying at night when it doesn’t quit counting the time until 20 to 1 in the morning.

Chairman Meow has been spending more and more time at the house – his human Angelo has been away a lot and he likes it here because we let him in the house out of the rain and wind – oh, and we feed him too. A few of the other neighbourhood cats have realized that there’s food here, so we are now feeding another little one as well from time to time.

One day we were out on the terrace doing some things and I heard a buzzing – I said it sounds like some bees, and wondered where they were. I went inside while Colin and Mo were still outside, then I heard them rush in and shut the door tight. Colin was looking out the window and told me to come quick – it wasn’t just a few bees, but thousands and thousands in a slow-moving swarm that came right down the lane on the lower side of the house.

They hovered for awhile just across and down a bit, then slowly moved on – they sounded like a freight train there were so many of them. A little later we were heading down to the bar and Colin had to take something down to the campervan – Mo and I took the short route to meet him at the bottom. We got partway down the ‘78 steps’ portion and I came to a dead stop. The bees were hovering quite low very near where the ‘short way’ and the ‘long way’ met.

I scooped Mo up and made a quick backtrack all the way up and around the long way that Colin had taken. When we got to where the short way and the long way met we managed to scurry by the hovering mass without getting attacked.

Despite a couple more days of crappy weather we managed to get all of the painting done that we wanted. We even managed to get Chairman Meow in a carrier case – with Colin wearing heavy-duty work gloves – and then taking him to the vets to get ‘fixed’.

Angelo had given his blessing to the venture, but was too scared of Meow’s vicious claws to try to get him in a box. Several hours later Colin collected him but no matter how much Meow begged we couldn’t yet feed him, following the vet’s instructions to wait until evening. Poor fellow – losing his balls and then being denied food all in the same day.

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