From this morning’s Metro:

AMERICA: Park officials have come up with an ingenious solution to the perennial problem of dog fouling - smearing peanut butter on the droppings. They hope the dogs will start licking the peanut butter and, when they return home, lick the faces of their owners. The authorities in Anchorage, Alaska, believe pet owners will be persuaded to use their pooper scoopers. City parks director Jim Posey said: ‘You only have to do it for a short while because everybody soon realises what their dog is really eating.’

It was a beeping smoke alarm that finally woke me up this morning - long after the radio had finished its blaring and given up on waking me. Jess was hiding from the incessant pipping under an armchair. Late this evening, realising I wasn’t going to get any sleep unless I shut it up, I drove out to the BP garage to buy a couple of new batteries. The girl behind the counter warned me that they were too expensive to buy more than one at a time even before she saw how much money I had on me. She was right.

The shower was cold, too, this morning, and even though I’ve had the water on since I got in this evening it’s still only coming out of the taps luke warm.

Half the office seems to be away at the moment, so I’m in charge. That means, among other things, working out what should appear on the cover, and sketching out ideas. After an hour of playing with the photocopier, biros and a couple of highlighters I felt like a fully-fledged Blue Peter presenter, and had a fairly comprehensive mock-up of what I hope the August issue might look like. Obviously with better drawings and photos rather than my ball-point scribbles, though.

More mixed weather has left the garden looking very fresh, albeit a bit soggy. There are tiny perfect drops inside most of the flowers. A lot of the paving slabs have gone a bit wobbly, though, and when you stand on some water spits out of a crack two or three slabs away. I’d forgotten how much work a garden is.

Came home and did an hour on my German. I’m still having trouble with a few common (and rather important) words. If, how, to be, very, where, stand and ‘to go’ are proving particularly elusive, but I’m able to string together some long sentences now, albeit still fairly phonetically in most instances.

Es tut mir lite abent ich weis wo es ist. Ich kann nich es finden.

Not bad for a week’s work considering tonight was the first time I’d done anything with it apart from on journeys to and from work.

1. Water, water everywhere…
   Drifted downstairs far later than I would have liked and in the absence of any real orange juice on account of not shopping for a...
   
   
2. Being naughty
   The last thing mum and Andrew say before going on holiday is always 'don't forget to water the garden'. The tomatoes, apparently, and some delicate...
   
   
3. A weekend at the house
   The house is almost finished. There's a little gap in the kitchen floor, and I still need a couple of pairs of curtains and two...