It’s about 6.30.

6.30 in the morning.

6.30 on a Saturday morning.

After a week of getting up at 5.40.

We stir enough for Piero to come in from the balcony. It is light. Dawn has broken.

In his mind, light = day. Movement = awake. Day and awake means getting up and going for a walk.

We don’t move from the bed. It is September and Autumn has well and truly arrived. It is cold, not helped by the balcony window being open. The bed is warm. F is warm. I need another hour or an hour and a half.

Piero doesn’t.

Piero tries to get our attention, which doesn’t work. So, he turns his attention to Dino.

He wants to play if he can’t go out for a walk. Dino is more like us and doesn’t want to play.

There is some playing on Piero’s side.

Dino gets fed up and gets on the bed. On Frankie’s side, of course. He lies down.

Piero puts his front paws on the bed but it seems a little too high for him (thank goodness).

I try to go back to sleep.

After a few minutes, Piero makes it onto the bed. Dino moves further up the bed. F, who is under the covers, whispers ‘Ti voglio bene’ (meaning I love you – as you would say to a child/relative/close friend). This sets Dino off and he moves further up the bed so that he is almost sitting on F’s face. Partly to get away from TLB (The Little Bastard) and partly because of what F has whispered to him.

F gets up. It is about 7.

We talk later about this. I tell him that this is not acceptable. He agrees. I say we should shut them out – shut them in the kitchen. F doesn’t want to do that. He says we can close the bedroom door. It doesn’t close properly – they will come through, I point out. He says we can put something behind it, like the laundry basket.

So, tomorrow morning, about 6.30 a.m., I guess, I will, most likely, be getting up to shut the door to the bedroom and, hopefully, giving us more time to sleep.

God, I really hope so. I feel as tired now, as I write this, as I did before the holidays!