Oh, and there's a bird stuck in my loft.

I heard some disturbingly loud thumping noises yesterday morning and for a moment I was convinced there was a burglar prowling round the flat in broad daylight; there wasn't, of course, and the noises turned out to be coming from the loft. A minute or two later came an unmistakable noise of wings flapping; it turned out - when I opened the hatch and shone a torch in there - some sort of smallish bird was sitting on a rafter and looking a bit nonplussed.

After failing to think of any particularly good ways to get it out of there, I rang the RSPCA who said I should just shut it back in the loft and it would eventually work out how to leave the same way it got in, and that this really was the most sensible thing to do and wasn't horribly cruel or anything. Unfortunately, they said, this might take anything up to a week; and sure enough, I could still hear it up there this morning. I suppose I should be thankful that it could still tell day from night and didn't scrabble around all night keeping me awake... I do hope it gets its act in gear soon.