One of the major obstacles to keeping the chaos under some semblance of control around here is that two of the rooms serve as depositories for things that don't have a home. For example the front room has the dining table and chairs in it, along with things like bags of insulation, strips of various sorts of mouldings, a sheet of perspex and so forth, and these have been added, usually in a hurry, as the need arises. So today, the front room was purged and is now (relatively) dirt-free. Two vacuum cleaner bags required to achieve the result, but it is done. Similarly, the plaster mess left behind last time the boys were here tends to chip off and descend into dust once trodden on in passing. So the front door and top light have been chipped free of plaster and given a good scrub. And the bedroom has been purged once again. Now all I have to deal with is the loungeroom, some of the contents of which will now move to the front room (but not too much as the plasters will need access to the walls if they decided to repair the cracks for free) and some more of which needs to go outside somewhere - but i am not sure where ...

I had a nasty start this morning when I went down to the chook run. One of the hens was missing and there was a pile of feathers up against the middle fence which suggested she had fallen prey to a passing raptor. But she was back in circulation this afternoon, so presumably got a nasty fright and hid under the shed while I was looking for her. Her comb is a bit bloody but she seems otherwise fine.

Shadow got to play with his fit-ball today. It was part of the score from the last freecycling exercise but needed to be inflated. I huffed and puffed and it now looks like a ball. But it needs more air in it before i can let him play with it unsupervised. He is prone to trying to bite a ball, and I would prefer this to last for a bit longer than the first bite. He loves it, however, and had a wonderful time scrambling along and falling over the top of it. Definitely a winner on the games stakes from his perspective.