A nice day – but…

This morning R and I went for a walk along the side of the River Eden. It is a particularly pretty bit called the “Orchard Walk” with lots of fruit trees (the fruit is actually free for the picking but I suspect not much needed as every one in Cupar seems to either have an apple tree or to know someone who is giving fruit away). Suddenly we heard a kind of squeaking from the river, and we were amazed to see a large otter swimming along in mid channel. It was an adult, and we think it was a female calling to its young. The photo is not very good as we were too busy watching it to start taking photos until she was vanishing off the scene.

This was later confirmed when I saw on the local Facebook page that someone had posted videos – sure enough it is a family of a mother and four cubs. I am really amazed because the only time I have ever actually seen an otter in the wild “in the flesh” is in Shetland; they were present in Lochgoilhead but we only ever saw them on our webcam. Anyway, score one to Cupar, and two for the fact that immediately after that, over 100 geese passed overhead in V formation honking loudly.

Then two nice ladies I met at the Local History group came in for a cup of coffee (and a Lidl croissant). It is great to actually meet some like minded people and do something simple and fun like going to the farmers’ market, rather than being stuck in the middle of nowhere. It was also nice to have some of my hard work actually appreciated – neither R nor J are what I would describe as “forthcoming” in that regard.

Then I went into the garage and worked on my latest project which is a wooden screen to hide the cat toilet in the hall. I am going to decoupage it with pictures of cats (and toilets – though not in the litter tray sense). I was just about to cut some panels with an electric saw, which is a task requiring a degree of concentration, when all of a sudden there was a loud squeak and Saphy shot out of the corner of the garage with something in her mouth. She went straight into the drawing room and released it behind a cabinet full of china and crystal glasses, and we couldn’t catch it without dismantling and moving the whole cabinet. R had a little moan to the effect of “Bloody Victorian house full of bloody fragile furniture and bloody fancy antiques” and I had to point out to him that the cabinet, and the glasses and the china all belong to me personally and were in our modern bungalow long before we acquired the house and the antiques. Anyway, we couldn’t catch the mouse but R kindly went out and bought a humane trap, so with luck we will find it in the morning and can release it.

So that was the “but” in what otherwise was a very nice day.