whatho | Till I have recovered my limbs ....

My parents are away, and the cats seem to have been trained to wake the household for food and ablutions at 6am. I don't think it's fair to train cats to go off at six and then leave them in the care of people who aren't accustomed to getting up until some time that really isn't six. Every time they're left in our care, my brother and I painstakingly reset their body clocks so they don't bother us till seven at the earliest, and sometimes not until eightish. We might try that again. The alternative is my resetting my own body clock so I go to bed around 11pm and get up at 6am rather than sleeping from 12.30am till 7.30am and sneakily beyond as is my current wont. But what do you do if you get up at 6am anyway? It's dark and freezing and nothing's open. I suppose I could write, but I'd feel all cold and hollow and half asleep, surely, even if I had gone to bed ninety minutes early. I suppose this attitude is why I shall never really be much in the way of a writer.

Also I'm discovering that the house is quite inhospitable of a morning when my mother hasn't been inhabiting it wakefully for an hour or so before I rise. My brother was up before me, but he hadn't turned the fire on, which is why the cats came to wake me a second time in order to complain about the service. And the heating hasn't come on. I don't know what time it's supposed to come on, but it hasn't. The dial suggests it's meant to kick in at six, rather like the cats, but also that it currently thinks it's about 5.30am. Which it isn't. So I don't know what to do about that. My father 'fixed' the heating some time ago. It's never been the same since.

I'm going to eat crumpets, and possibly find a duvet to wear. Or I'll go outside and come back in again. Then things will seem practically toasty.