Well blow me down. Bob turned up this morning. A message a couple of days ago letting me know he'd be here on Friday (yesterday), so Little Fish and I hung around at home apart from our emergency nappy dash. No Bob. 4PM another message, "oops, run out of time, be with you tomorrow instead".

Fast forward to this morning. A lie-in - no one disturbed me until 7AM and even then it was birdsong, not childwrong. Great. Eased myself out of bed, made a cup of coffee in peace, gave Mog her morning meds in bed and watched her drop back off to sleep, sat and read and enjoyed the peace and quiet. And then a sudden panicked remembrance of Bob's message from the day before and a realisation that he could in fact be with us at 8AM. Leap up, dropping coffee and race to swap nightie for clothes designed for more public view. Doing so wakes Little Fish, and the day begins in earnest.

I wonder how long Little Fish might have slept if I hadn't woken her? Typically on a Saturday she either wakes at 6.30 as normal, or goes on snoozing til gone 9. Usually up early when we have nothing to do, and sleeping on when I had a busy day planned. But hey ho, at least I had one quiet cup of coffee and an uninterrupted night; either one would make for a good morning. Looking for more than that is just greedy!

So, breakfast for Little Fish, clothes and changes for both girls, and three of us ready for the day ahead. No Bob. We cook, we mop, we clean, no Bob. We consider going out - it wouldn't be the first time Bob has not turned up, and he has a key so no problems there. But we wait. Little Fish elects to sit in the window; she wants to wait for the school bus. Giving up on trying to explain it's Saturday I plonk her on the sill and wait for her to realise it herself. So it is Little Fish who first lets me know "MAN MAN" is here at last.

Hurrah!

One cup of tea and much discussion later, I have a rough idea of what he needs to do. In the garden, he needs to replace the gate, finish the decking. And then he'll come inside and sort out the few remaining jobs to be done there. All well and good.

I don't know why I was surprised to look out of the window and finding him pruning the hedges instead of the agreed work... He's just walked in with a gleam in his eye which tells me he's about to say something like "that fence is damaged; I'll fix up a new one before I do the gate". I hope I'm wrong
Tia