Mrs Mop

At last - a clean house! After two years of Skene sulking everytime the vacuuming is due, I return every Monday to the smell of polish and limelite. No more guilty conscience for me. And I have the time to weed the drive and scrub the paintwork - the important chores. It seems that I am now properly middle class in my own right having retained a domestic operative. I shall have to swap back to the Daily Telegraph.

What Katie Did Next

Katie and Brendon visited this weekend on a flat-hunting frenzy. Having so far resisted the temptation to follow me to the south, my little sister has finally given in and done the inevitable. And I have to admit, rather grudgingly, that I'm looking forward to their arrival in late July.

Doctor Katie has secured a two-year paediatric rotation for her senior house officer job. The first year will be in Lewisham (bound to be an eye-opener for someone used to practising medicine in glamorous Edinburgh) and the second stage is a spell at Guy's new children's hospital. She shopped around for somewhere to live but eventually acknowledged my superior viewpoint and settled on south-east London.

A swanky new flat by Deptford Creek tempted them and we know that it'll only be a matter of time before she's calling it "West Greenwich".

We've lived at opposite ends of the country for nine years now and I wonder if we'll attract the same level of intrigue as we used to do in Blackburn on a Saturday night. I can't see the similarity but we were always accused of being twins.

Old boyfriends have regularly been embarrassed by approaching - and kissing! - the wrong Hacking girl and we were often greeted at social events with "which one are you?" Katie's schoolfriends would be offended when I snubbed them in the street. Customers at the Dog and Otter used to complain to me when Katie forgot their drinks - it was years before the regulars even realised that there were two of us! Chaos.

If Katie insists on continuing to employ a private investigator to follow me on my shopping trips, it seems likely that the confusion will be ongoing. I've never actually spotted him but how else can her tendency to buy exactly the same items of clothing as me be explained? At least that way she won't be forced to raid my wardrobe.

Tea Leaf

I had my wallet stolen this afternoon only three weeks after my Switch card was cloned. Don't the ungrateful little wretches realise what I do all week?

Vultures and Ducks

Following my fifteen minutes of fame, the media vultures descended. I had calls from the National Press Agency, the Daily Telegraph (who should have known better!) and the News of the World, all of whom wanted the contact details for the innocent victim so that they could sell his tear-jerking story to the world. I was not the weak link that they were looking for and told them in no uncertain terms that I would not be dishing out such information even if I had it.

On my return home, I found that the swans were parading their cygnets for the first time. Little silver fluffy birds were gliding gracefully around Canada Water before dabbling in the litter in the corner. The grebes have also had some success. They rebuilt their nest after being ousted from their first home by some particularly vicious coots. Nevertheless, they have produced offspring - the third year in a row. No diving lessons have started yet.

Meanwhile, the population explosion in the coot world continues. The second brood from the canal have grown and developed their adolescent plumage. No longer clockwork chicks in black fluff. The breeding pair have now notched up three nests along a short stretch of the Albion Channel. The second was built after the first two chicks refused to fly the nest but the latest was simply indulgent!

We've finally had some ducklings too - seven of them have descended from a nest in a tree. Or so Skene insists. I can't believe that any mallard would expect its young to take its first flight from a tree before even dipping its webbed feet in water. Especially over the fox's den, its hungry jaws gaping below. Another of Skene's duck conspiracy theories.