Has it really been 7 weeks?!

Oh dear, I really have been a bit rubbish lately. No excuses - except the usual stuff. Although I have been doing a creative writing course and actually got a short story published! We have also finally replaced our car - an 11 year old Audi estate that has failed us too many times and cost too much in repairs over the past year to keep running. Although of course I have signed on the dotted line for the new car ( a cheap and cheerful eco-friendly super-mini, although alas not an actual mini) just before the govt announces its £2k scrappage scheme for cars over 9 years old. Pah! And absolutely typical. Our son was born just a week too early for the £250 baby bond scheme - it's kind of a theme with us. No doubt next year there will be a 'convert your hideous garage to a room' grant of several squillion pounds.

Window-gate is still running, although the mountain ash is in and looking good, if titchy. My beloved magnolia survived the move to its new position and is thriving, which is a great comfort. I spend a lot of time shaking my fist (not quite but almost literally) at the man who cut down the trees next door, and planning my next move, which is a large palm tree and a strategically placed thicket of black bamboo. Hope it goes bananas and overruns his garden. Double pah!

The builders arrive on Wednesday to start the great master bedroom and ensuite bathroom renovation. On the one hand I am absolutely thrilled to be kissing goodbye to the inadequate single radiator, peeling paint, avocado basin, cracked and bumpy anaglypta ceiling and brown painted floorboards. On the other hand I am still fairly traumatised from the events of 2007-8 and dreading the three weeks ( optimistic estimate!) of disruption to come. We are going to spend Easter Monday distributing the contents of our bedroom round the house and deciding whether to move our bed down to the small sitting room or put the kids into together and move into our son's room for the duration. Either way it's going to be horrible! But, as I keep reminding myself, a mere bagatelle compared with what I've weathered in the past.

I have always got my bathrooms from Bathstore in the past, but a friend really rates B&Q for bathrooms and radiators so I am thinking of giving them a whirl. Certainly looks cheaper, at a quick glance.

We are having another bank of floor to ceiling bookshelves in the bedroom. Seriously, we are running out of wall space. If I send my husband out for a pint of milk he comes back with three books under his arm. There are three or four charity shops at the end of our road, all with very good book sections, and he just can't resist it. Whenever I suggest a purge he goes through the shelves and comes up with a paltry selection, usually all mine anyway, consisting of three cookery books and a theatre programme from 1985. Perhaps I should send him to Bibliophiles Anonymous.