Day 304: Cold, feet and hot water

It's been a chilly day today and we've been doing chores. This morning we took Exile #3 and Exile #4 to the shoe shop as Exile #3 had been complaining that her shoes don't fit. Both of them now have new sneakers. Our other purchase was a new kettle. We bought the largest and most powerful one available - still although it runs at 13 A, it's less than 2 kW thanks to the lower voltage mains electricity, so it's not fast by UK standards.

The other main activity of the day has been raking. Exile #2 has let me commandeer a sheet which I used to move the small leaf piles in the back yard onto the main pile by the road. We now have a quite large pile you can see the edge of the lawn at the back - when I went out it was impossible to determine where the grass ended thanks to the thick layer of fallen leaves. Still several trees seem to have dropped only a few, so there will be more to do. According to the neighbours, the fall has been late and spread-out this year. They also said that some years they have piled up their leaves at around Thanksgiving and they have sat by the road covered in a thick layer of snow for the whole winter. We're not quite ready for all that yet.

E5N1 has continued to pile weight on despite showing every sign of being a fussy eater. He is quite decided in his opinions, if he doesn't like something, he doesn't eat it; and when he does like something he likes to be in control of the spoon, with interesting results.