The Manor was invaded over the weekend.

I confess the invasion caught me completely off guard and the first I knew of it, they had breached my front defences and were swarming all over the lawn waving slash-hooks, siege ladders, vicious looking weapons and they were all armoured.

Fortunately it was only Daughter and family who had been bored at home and had decided to attack some of my trees, brambles and bushes and had arrived suitably dressed and equipped

Seeing as the day had obviously been declared a gardening day, I decided on the spur to have another look at the lawnmower. I whipped the punctured wheel off and to my surprise got it inflated on my first attempt. Practice makes perfect? So off I went. I had to set the blades at their highest but the lawns do look a little neater. The grass is still long, but at least it’s all the same length long.

Yesterday I was kind of bollixed. You have no idea how tiring it is watching people hack down trees bushes and brambles. I decided to try a little project I had been mulling over for a while. What I wanted to do was create a computer program that listed all the library books I had read sorted by author. I could bring the list to the library, find the authors I had read [and liked] and get books that I was sure I hadn’t read before.

The problem was that I could download a list of my borrowings from the Interweb but the file was very messy and too detailed. So my program had to delve into the mess, extract author and title, place author surname first, followed by first name and book title and the lot to be sorted and printed.

To my disgust the program I wrote worked first time. I was hoping for a bit of a challenge to get the grey cells working but that was not to be.

All I have to do now is wait for the library to open.