Country life

Things are a little sad chez Rushforth right now, as Georgie the baby alpaca had to be put to sleep earlier today. My mum and I took her to the vet yesterday, and today she was worse, so a nice man in a waxed jacket came out and administered the coup de grace. They say that if you've got livestock, you've got deadstock. My mother is much better at this sort of thing than my dad, who gets very melancholy about it. Me, I'm sad about Georgie, but I hadn't been feeding her regularly like my parents had, and I do think she was too miserable to be kept going any longer.

Also, this morning I woke up to find a small mobile installed above my bed, two large moths dangling from strands of spider web. This evening I evicted a large gangly-legged spider, and thought I'd got the culprit. But just now a huge black spider-beast with hairy legs, huge mandibles, and a body the size of a large wasp, scurried down my wall and behind some books I need to pack. I am sure that in the night I will squash it and wake up with squashed spider on my face. In short, I am ready to return to civilisation.