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These little kittens showed up with their mother today and broke my heart to see the state they were in. The mother has been coming to our door for a couple of months now, we feed her, give her a cuddle, even de-flea her.

We knew she had been pregnant but assumed she'd lost her litter considering how much time she spent on our doorstep, but today she brought two of them around early this morning, then just before dinner time she brought another two kittens.

We don't know how old the kittens are but they're in a terrible state. Their eyes are filled with puss that need a regular clean out, and they have horrible patches of dry flaky skin on their tails and paws. It breaks your heart to see them like this.

I've mentioned before I can't wait for the day we start a family considering most of my family and friends have all had children, and for some reason the idea of having a baby just keeps coming up.

A very good friend recently gave birth to her first boy who was huge, he weighed 9lbs at birth, so I'll bet she'll be frantically rubbing the stretch mark oil all over her belly and thighs to try and get back to her normal beautiful self again very soon.

In fact if she hasn't already bought some I'm going to send her a tub of stretch mark butter. I was quite surprised to find that you can actually buy this online from Due, and it's quite reasonably priced as well.

Of course Due are best known for their maternity clothes, they stock a great range of trendy and fashionable items that won't embarrass any young mother to be. Seeing photos of my own mother when she was pregnant, I am so glad we live in the 21st century where comfortable and attractive don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Who would of thought that these days pregnant women can wear jeans and high heels and still turn heads, well OK, maybe only from the back, but still it's got to be a confidence boost?

When we were living in Australia the cane toad was one of the most feared creatures to enter my garden, first of all they scare the heck out of you when you suddenly jump out in front of you, they're poisonous to people and pets, and they kill off the geckos.

Some people we knew used to play cane toad golf or cricket with them to try and control their numbers. It's a cruel sport but the alternative to is try and catch them and place them in a deep freeze and just let them go to sleep and then die peacefully.

Today I notice that a bunch of scientists in Australia and the US have been studying how far cane toads can actually travel in different climates and they've come to the conclusion that a lot of Southern Australia is actually too cold for the cane toad so the invasion will continue, but they'll never really be able to take control like they've done in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

I guess knowing the toad's capabilities is good news because now we can focus our energies on their warmer routes across the continent, instead of trying to stop them reaching place like Melbourne or Adelaide. Maybe now they can finally start to figure out ways to make the toads stop moving north and west. That would be good.

BBC News

Ugh! Why do some people have to be so annoying? Yesterday we were walking around Ronda, we had a fair bit to do in a short amount of time, so we had to rush. Now anyone who knows our little town will also know that the pavements are quire narrow.

So why do people stop to talk to friends and not make any effort to step into a doorway, or perhaps off into the street between the parked cars. This isn't rocket science, and they would be making sure other people can still get past them.

But they never do, and it tries my patience so much. Ugh!

Sometimes I wish I was the mayor, I'd create a new department with the right to issue fines, the first thing they would do is patrol the pavements and fine the people who block the way. Then I'd get them to deal with the kids and cars with loud music. What tries your patience?

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Do they have a toll free number? Does the contractor have a website? Can you send them an email? All of these features of ClickSmart are right there on screen, but there is more, each listing also has a one-click call link, yup, that's right, simply click that to speak directly to the contractor using VoIP, now getting a houston home inspector is easy, and safer.

As a kid I used to love reading, and Enid Blyton was alays one of my favourite authors. Strangely enough it was never the 'Famous Five' series that I enjoyed the most, I started with Noddy, then as I got older used to love Brer Rabbit, but as a young teenager my all time favourite Enid Blyton books were the Adventure series.

I mention all of this because Enid Blyton has just been voted best author in the UK, beating J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien and many more.

Considering the racist controversy around some of her books like the Noddy series, and the fact so many of her stories have been edited before they were republished I'm really pleased to see her take the top number of votes, she was always my favourite author, and she wrote books for all ages of children from toddler to teenager which is something very few authors seem to manage.

You can see the complete list of top 50 British authors at the Costa Book Awards.

Now that we've made the decision to use bike as our main source of transport (other than buses and trains), we're starting to notice the cyclists around our region and how fit they are.

Cycling in Spain is a very popular individual sport, in Ronda there are at least 2 or 3 major off-road races avery year that take cyclists about 100km around the mountains with very little of it on roads.

At the Olympics Spain has also done well with gold medals from Samuel Sanchez winning the 245km men's road race, and Joan Llaneras winning the men's points race.

These two guys are going to be national heroes when they return home after the Olympics considering that cycling has won two of the three gold medals awarded to Spain. I expect to see a lot more interest in cycling as a sport after this.