Still in the catch-up zone with this-week's strip which goes all the way back to spring in the garden of Hawkins Street and deciding it wasn't worth doing anything about the state of it, given that we'd be gone soon enough and anyway the birds were really liking it. Every morning (and most evenings) the Blackbirds would start calling and fighting, occasionally attacking people, cats, windows. Blackbirds aren't usually so territorial, but the garden was full of odd sorts -- my favourites were a photo-shy gay pigeon couple.

The day the nest finally got torn down I was working flat-out on a comic strip, but the sheer volume of bird-noise got me out of the door. The nest was in ruins and at the back of the garden, looking nervous and guilty, was not the regular old black-and-white tom whose prowl I'm on (he'd been chased off by the birds) but a skinny, twitchy-looking youngster, too old to call a kitten but not really adult yet, his pedigree-even smoky grey fur hinting at a privileged background.

He gave me an insolent stare with tea-coloured eyes, and I chased him off, furious. There was just one nestling, well-fed and healthy, apart from being dead. He'd eaten the head and left me the rest.

It was an odd-place, where I lived on Hawkins Street; an old Printer's yard [Edit: apparently it was actually a huge industrial laundry, with a yard out back for the vans.] had been covered with tiny modern houses that felt like tents, a percentage luxury-ownered, a percentage private-rented and a percentage council-house. Mine was a rental next to a council house that specialised in couples/parents with one or two toddlers. Just before we left, a new family had moved in; although there were always baby clothes on the line outside (in all weathers) we neither heard nor saw the child or mother (usually a problem with the paper-thin walls) after their initial visit; just four or five adult men, coming and going, coming and going.

I wasn't sorry to leave.

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Thanks for all your fabulous responses to the Cup of Sperm Poll. With 56 responses, it already has a bigger sample than the study which inspired it, and I'm confident we can make it even more scientific if we try. In the mean-time, I'm pleased to report that the percentage of people who like their men-friends to look good on a sofa has gone up to over 55%, and new additions to features that make a man attractive include dressing like a pirate, buying star wars lego and letting you play with it, and "the ability to make up amusing stories about a stout cross cat's secret life".

I've probably said it before, but I love you guys!