Decorating disasters

So Jason and I have been doing a bit of decorating this week. I painted some mismatched bedroom furnture and added new knobs, painted over the grubby parts of the walls and put a satin varnish on the nice wooden floor. We thought we'd extend this loveliness to the hall so that we could have nice clean walls to hang up some of our lovely Japanese photographs and we hammered a few of the loose floorboards down.

BBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGG mistake.

We burst the pipe in not one, but two places. Big fat d'oh. The only way we knew was when the downstairs neighbours came up to tell us that they were being rained on.

Consequently, I have sat until 4.30pm today unable to do anything, under house arrest waiting for the plumber to show up, get busy and leave.

Thankfully, it's all sorted now and we should still be on track to finish the varnishing as we go for the night bus to London tomorrow night.

A costly error never to be repeated. If you ever find yourself nailing wooden floors down, ALWAYS put the nail at either side of the board and NEVER in the middle. Your central heating pipes are down the middle of your boards.

Life lessons on Nitidnicola.

Posh new sign

Check out our posh new sign. It popped up overnight outside our building. And....our building gets a menshy. Wooooooo! It's a nice handy map for tourists. Good for locals too, Jason and I had a wee squint at it going out for our run this morning.

Danny went home

Looking after cats for other people is one of my favourite things to do. I love giving them food, buying them treats, playing with them and their toys, aww just everything about the whole experience. In Clyde's case, it was rewarding to see him go from a very nervous boy to a confident tom in only a few days. And with Scooby it was great to see him learn how to climb, learn about playing with his adults and start miaowing. Or mow as he says it!

So it was with a heavy heart that I had to hand back Danny at lunchtime today. Poor Jason didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to him because he was at work. We had hoped that we'd have him until tonight but the guys got back from T in the Park earlier than planned.

Viv phoned to say they were coming round to collect Danny and I kind of panicked. I hadn't made enough Danny videos. So, here are the ones I made in the few minutes it took for the girls to come round after phoning. I just love Danny, I can't wait until he comes back to visit.

Right I'm off to tidy up the bedroom to distract myself from the fact that I'm in an empty house. Boo.

Scooby went home

A sad fact indeed. Scooby-do went home this morning. It had been a fantastic time for all 3 of us; me, Jason and Scoobs had definitely enjoyed our time together. He had the run of the house for almost three weeks. Me and Scoobs used to have long snuggles in the afternoon and he would fall asleep on my shoulder. It was a lovely time in St George's Cross.... Until that is, Danny the Danster came to stay for T in the Park weekend. We thought (in hindsight, rather niavely) that Danny and Scooby would get on well together as they are both cats with lovely temperaments. Not so. It turns out that cats need WEEKS to integrate with each other. So we had to separate the wee guys, with Danny in the kitchen and Scooby in the living room. It was okay, but not ideal. Thursday night through to Sunday morning. A long time for segregation in a two-bed flat. It was for that reason that we took Scoobs home first thing this morning. Young Danny (who by the way is now a total MONSTER-sized cat) is at last lying in his favourite seat in the living room again. It's lovely having Danny wandering around the house again. I forgot about his love for water and so we've had him pawing under the taps splashing himself. Awwww, total Ell You Vee.

My cousin David's wedding

It was a lovely sunny day for my cousin's wedding. His wife is French and lots of her family had made the trip over which was really nice. The ceremony was out in Pollok somewhere at St. James the Great chapel and then the reception was up at the Men's Union at Glasgow Uni. After the ceremony, the wedding party and guests went down to the bridge at Kelvingrove Park, which remained free of bare-chested, Buckfast boozers long enough for us all to get some lovely shots. After dinner, it was upstairs for some boogying to disco classics AND disco classics in French. Formidable.

Congratulations David and Claire for a lovely wedding, a beautiful day and delicious food!

The Scratching Barrel (or barrels of fun)

The Scratching Barrel. It has two interconnected dens, another wee hidden den 3/4 of the way up and a nice comfy cushion on the top. I've been trying to persuade Scooby into this lovely funhouse since it arrived on Monday and he has shown mild interest at best. Until now. I had strategically placed these... https://www.millbryhill.co.uk/pet-products-529/for-the-cat-539/cat-food-555/cat-treats-567/dreamies-salmon-treats-20473.htm in and on certain parts of the structure in the hope that it would tempt him in. And it worked. As did the wee hanging mouse that is stapled to the roof of the second den. He just loves those "Dreamies". The blurb says that once you rattle the packet, your cat will come running. Scooby does exactly that. He just loves them.

The lace thing you see hanging from the barrel is Lacey, a home-made toy that he likes to gnaw on.

I put the last photo up because it was just too cute. Those are Jason's pyjamas.

Michelle and Gregor came for tea

I've no pictures of last night's festivities but in summary, Jason made his delicious Thai Fish Curry (and Michelle became a convert of fish, vowing to eat Cobbler again). It went down very well and we had some light summer drinks, glasses of lager and cider, before moving onto our usual staple of red, red wine.

Scooby was initially a bit shy but soon nibbling on Gregor's fingers. It wasn't long before both Michelle and Gregor fell in love with young Scoobs. He's so adorable, it's hard not to love this little kitteh.

He was kept up way past his bedtime and manic Scoobs did appear about midnight, tearing around the house as he does. By about 1am, he had just collapsed. By 2am, so had we.

Highlights of the night were the Socky and Holly out-takes (Gregor's puppet show dvd that he made for his nephews with the help of Michelle, me and Jason) and that Michelle and I won the Movie Quiz, beating both boys. Hooray for Girls.

Here are some Scooby pics and a wee vid.

Scoobs dealing with the heat

It's been so hot the last few days, it's hard enough for us humans but for the poor wee animals, it must be torture. Young Scoobs was feeling the heat, preferring to sleep on the glass dining table than the sofa because it felt quite cool and he was seeking out shady places to sit. We felt sorry for him so knowing his love for batting stuff about the wooden floor, we got him an ice cube to play with. He was a bit unsure of his first one, but come the second one he was chasing it around and before long his wee nose was nice and cool and his wee paws too.

One thing led to another and before long, we put a paddling pool for him. He was naturally reserved but had good fun cooling his paws down.