Ruadhri is eleven today. I know – my baby! So hooray, party time. Not quite. Poor Rors woke up with a sore throat and temperature so stayed off school, laid out on the sofa at first although he picked up during the day. He was able to put away an impressive amount of pizza, pringles, Beyblades cake made by big sister Caiti and choc-mint ice-cream for his tea, so the day wasn’t a complete disaster.

And what do you give an eleven year old boy want for his birthday? A couple of pigs, of course! Actually, it’s entirely fortuitous that our two latest porcine additions Porky and Pine, who are Saddleback/Berkshire crosses, were ready to be collected today. We’d been waiting a few weeks for them but the wet weather had made their field at their old home inaccessible. But they’re here now. They’re a lot more shy than our three Berkshires since I don’t think they’d been handled a great deal but they’ll soon settle in.

Forgive the blurriness - flash wouldn't work

Rors ended up with the usual suspects of a book, some DS games and a variety of Beyblades. If you don’t have a youngish boy in your household you probably won’t know what they are. They’re basically spinning tops, but very vamped up and the idea is that you battle them against each other with the cry of “Let’s rip!”. They have names such as Galaxy Pegasus, Poison Virgo, Midnight Bull, Hyper Aquarius and Pricey Gizmo (one of those may be made up) and there’s a cartoon series associated with them. To be honest, they’re rather fun. I enjoy it when Rors asks me for a match but I have to show a modicum of parental disapproving reluctance otherwise Rors would go off them! Parents aren’t meant to approve of cool things.

Beyblade cake by Caiti

So not a bad birthday although not the one we’d planned. But you know my thoughts about plans…

A cute photo to finish. We have a baby hedgehog living in the woodpile by the barn. He potters around in front of the house every evening. He’s sweet.