….and I live in a hole (in Linda and David’s garden in case you’d not twigged).

Me? I’m as ‘chuffed as ninepence’ as they say to find we have some wildlife we didn’t know we’d got in our garden. Yep – we’ve got our very own mole and unlike more-or-less anyone else in the world, I’m really genuinely pleased. I’ve never experienced such a thing before, not that we ever see it, we just see its spoil heaps in the mornings.

The local cats sit and stare at the heaps with seemingly endless fascination – yep, Becks, if you’re wondering why Gizmo keeps coming home all muddy, this is why – he’s taken up residence peering down at the mole heaps waiting for something to happen.

Strangely, each day, the hens demolish the mole heaps, they obviously find things that are smaller than the mole can be bothered to eat. You can see one of Terri’s feathers on this one. Terri (BTW we don't use gloves to handle them any more - they feel wonderful, we've discovered) is partially bald again because of the seemingly ritualistic feather plucking by her nemesis, Milly (top dog chicken as I’ve said before).

Anyway, the ‘lawn’ is only a lawn in the loosest of senses. In the year since we’ve been here it’s been brought back from the completely wild but it’s still completely full of weeds. I’m too terrified to give it a dose of ‘weed and feed’ in case it goes completely bald!!!

I know that I often say that ‘there is no such thing as an original photograph' but I must say I have never seen a mole hill photo before – though I’m sure someone will disabuse me of that soon enough.

This pic will, I know, cause every Brit out there over a 'certain age' to recall with glee the wonderful Jasper Carrott (a Brummie comedian of the best ilk) sketch about his mole. How many times have I pictured his eyes staring wildly while he shot his 'air' gun....and I mean that in the 'air guitar' sense, not in the thing that hurts sense!

It’s been a complete pleasure to be able to pop up the garden for my pic today…even though I still couldn’t do anything with it until 7.30pm when I eventually finished work. Have you noticed my return to colour images over the last few days - I expect it'll be back to B&W tomorrow....

Two years ago, I was getting solace in my 'special place' and last year, I was forcing myself to rest so I could recover before getting a minor op a few days later.