Many years previously, on a trip around the north circular to Ikea designed to provide us with CD storage boxes, I had found a lovely circular mirror with a blue and green mosaic surround. (And two rugs, 200 tea lights, a four foot long green snake, several uselessly small wicker baskets and Swedish meatballs, among other things. Sadly, no CD storage boxes.) Like the sky and the sea, blue and green next to each other have always been a personal favourite, and one morning inspiration struck: blue and green tiles it was. In my current state of deluded grandeur ‘Topps Tiles’ in the nearby town was clearly out of the question: Fired Earth was obviously my next port of call, in a rather lovely converted water mill about an hour from the house. Fresh coffee was offered, Aga gadgets (yet another retailing opportunity I hadn’t anticipated) perused, and hundreds of tiles examined for hue, shape, finish, size - who could have guessed the number of permutations? Over the years I had laughed inwardly at the under employed friends who had spent weeks crossing London looking for exactly the right shade of white for their skirting boards: ‘Get a life!’ I had seethed ‘Get a dog - get a JOB even!’ and now, I freely admit, I had joined their number. My indecision knew no bounds. Again, I was scared of getting it wrong on a mammoth scale: the waste of money, the loss of face, the ruined opportunity - and the scale of the alternatives available was baffling. If someone had said ‘Red or yellow, take your pick’ it would have been easy. (Neither.) But ‘Mole, String, Mouse’s Back, Taupe or Cord’ as paint colours had my eyes swivelling in panic. Now, with ‘Aqua, Navy, Sea, Moss, Lichen, Turquoise, Sky and Lincoln’ to choose from, I was hyperventilating in record time. And the knowledge that this was only one room, and that we yet had five bathrooms to do, didn’t help.

Nonetheless, and with the help of a very patient lady - who admittedly had clearly seen her pension fund walk through the door when I arrived - I eventually chose seven different colours of a fairly small square tile with a shiny finish and got a couple of each packaged up to take home and show Eeyore. (A quick aside: I have always found it best in these situations to SEEM to consult - a fait accompli tends to cause conflict: the impression given of a shared decision softens the blow when the bill appears.) All was going well, and he approved immediately of my excellent choice - until the whole lot was costed and the hitherto lovely lady said, with barely a slip of her lovely polished accent, that we were looking at the wrong end of £5,000 for the lot.

Now even I have my limits. I didn’t wait to tell Eeyore and have him hit the roof: I did it for him. ‘Ludicrous’ and ‘immoral’ were two words I squeaked when I could. I think ‘Revolting’ was another, but I’m not entirely sure. Whatever, by the end of the phone call it was entirely clear that I would be going elsewhere for my tiles. Two days later I was heading up the A1 with my samples on the front seat, heading for a town I had never been to before, on the recommendation of an acquaintance of dubious taste, looking for a warehouse on the edge of the fens where, I was promised, every tile in the world was represented. Sure enough, there they were: identical in every way but price. I think I got the whole lot (5318 sq in) for a grand total of £750. And while I was at it I got a load of samples for the bathrooms and loos thus, as far as I could see, taking the cost of the petrol for a return trip off the overall bill. What a cheap wife I was proving to be.

Back at home I got a large piece of plywood and put it on the floor of what would one day be a drawing room. Bare boards and wet plaster at the time, but in my mind’s eye there was a certain faded grandeur to it .... It took me four days of meticulously moving and placing 100 tiles to achieve the dashingly casual random pattern I wanted repeated on the walls until the area was covered. Anyone fool enough to come to the house during that time was roped in to check that no adjacent tiles were the same colour and to offer an opinion - and if anyone minded that their views were scorned on the spot, they were too wise to mention it. Only Eeyore knew me well enough to steer well clear.

Finally, I was happy. Unca Pete was called and he came in with The Chef (his son) in tow, to carry the board into the kitchen prior to sticking the whole lot to the walls. The Chef was between jobs, and as a man of some years’ tiling experience, had agreed to undertake the not inconsiderable task of the kitchen. All went well - for about three minutes.

‘Ah.’ said Unca Pete.

‘What do you mean, ‘Ah’ ‘ I enquired, not unreasonably, with a deep sense of foreboding.

‘It’s just that ... I’m not sure we can get the board through the door without tipping it.’ said Unca Pete bravely.

There was a pause.

‘Tipping it, how much?’ I asked with restraint.

‘Too much.’ he said succinctly.

I breathed in and out, slowly.

‘Right.’ I said. ‘French windows?’ I had a cunning plan that we could take it out, along the side of the house and back in through the hole in the wall where the door into the kitchen would one day go.

‘Nailed shut. New cement.’ said the man who had just moved a few feet further away from me, in case.

I breathed in and out, slowly.

‘Right.’ I said. ‘Plan B?’

There was a pause.

‘We nail a batten to the bottom of the board, and they rest on that as we tip it.’ Unca Pete saved the day.

‘Fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. Thank God for that ... see?! There’s always an answer. On you go!’ I was sunny and jolly again and back to being their favourite client.

Except that it didn’t work. The tiles were so heavy that the board flexed alarmingly when picked up, and the board itself was so big that it had to be tipped at a very acute angle even to approach the doorway, and the tiles at the top started to move, pushing those below them out and risking bringing the whole lot crashing off. Quite apart from the cost of replacing the stupid things, I couldn’t bear the idea of another trip to the back of beyond and another four days of trying to be arty.

‘Right.’ I said, much more calmly than I felt. ‘Plan C.’

We stood and thought. Then I stood and thought, while Unca Pete went and put the kettle on.

‘I’ve got it!’ I said aloud to the empty room. ‘A photo!’ So while Unca Pete and The Chef had a brew, I dug through boxes and piles and rooms of clobber and displaced essentials until I found my digital camera. Triumphantly, I marched into the drawing room and in the fading light took a couple of pictures of the board on the floor - true, they had to be a bit small to get the whole lot in, but if you concentrated you could work it out and it was with a great sense of having overcome the odds that I went triumphantly to find Unca Pete and The Chef.

‘Great!’ said Unca Pete.

‘Except .... ‘ said The Chef hesitantly, looking sideways at his dad who buried his face in his mug.

‘Except what?’ I enquired.

‘Except ... I’m colour blind.’ said The Chef.

The silence was deafening. Not in my head, where I was screaming, but all across the building site you could suddenly have heard a pin drop.

‘Right.’ I said, with frightening control. ‘So what exactly was the point of the last four days?’

‘Well I did wonder ...’ he said.

I breathed in and out twice - in through the nose, out through the mouth, as you’re taught for labour. It didn’t work now, either. ‘Back in a minute’ I muttered, and left at speed, pausing only to scoop up Geordie who was chuffed to bits with the turn of events: off we went to count the rats in the copse we called Rabbit’s House.

That night, I hatched a cunning plan. I gave each colour a number and labelled each box of tiles on every face (just in case). Then I made and copied a master list of the tile serial number, name, colour (pointless, but just in case) and the number I had given it. Then, at around midnight, I drew a grid of 100 squares, and numbered each one according to the tile that I had decided should go there. Genius. And it worked. It took a very long time to do, but slowly slowly with great care, much checking and a very accurate eye, The Chef applied 352 whole tiles and innumerable slips to bits of the kitchen wall. Where, as I write, most of them are currently obscured by drying washing, or dirty washing-up. Hey-ho.

This week I made the mad dash from Argyll to Lincolnshire, thence to Norfolk, to Lincolnshire again and then back to Argyll. Necessary, believe me, or I would never have done it, but it’s a very long way for three days and so this time, I did it by train.

‘Let the train take the strain’ ran the old advertising slogan and oh boy, did I. From friends on Loch Awe I drove to the rather faded little seaside town of Helensburgh and left the car parked behind someone’s chainlink fence (I have no idea whose) before hopping on the little chugga train which took two hours to get me to Glasgow and then another 30 minutes to reach Edinburgh. Honestly, I could almost have walked it in that time. But I didn’t, and some of it was very pretty, and because we stopped at every half-horse settlement along the way I can truly say that I have seen far more of Scotland in the last week than in the rest of my life to date.

So far so good but from Waverley, LNER hit the buffers. Or rather, never left them - for some reason we were more than an hour delayed, so I missed my connection at York, and the long and the short of it all is that I got a total refund! Deep joy and more than worth the minor inconvenience of having longer in which to read my book.

I was buoyed by my windfall and I went mad and booked the return ticket, first class. First class! Imagine the decadence. And then imagine the glee with which I realised it was all happening again – this time two of the four legs of the journey were late and so I missed connections and the whole thing took almost 3hrs longer than it should and yes! Another total refund.

But, ladies and gentlemen, I did what I usually do and started talking with my travelling companions. Annie, Christine and I bonded over the dog fight that broke out in the carriage between a huge Golden Retriever, a Saluki and a chihuaha/Jack Russell cross – there was a lot of noise and posturing and for a moment it looked as though it was all going to go horribly wrong. But order was restored and we began by agreeing that we had never before travelled with three dogs in the same carriage, and then they backed me up when I was almost chucked off the train for having only a photo of my railcard, not the real thing. (The fact that the photo showed an expiry date of Feb 2028 cut no ice, nor did the email confirming my payment, and I think I only prevailed in the end because I bored the ticket collector into submission – not a first.) Then the three of us moved on to books, and celebrity crushes - Patrick Grant, Rowan Atkinson and Cheerful Charlie amongst others, since you ask - and all in all we had a very jolly time.

None of which would have come about, had I driven. As it was, I had two free trips during which I met nice people and saw different places. I kept my footprint small and trod lightly for once, and by midnight I was home in Argyll.

As a very famous chap once said, although admittedly on a far weightier subject, ‘It was (you may say) satisfactory.’

And then I saw it. The Sofa. Huge and inviting and (ominously) in the very front of the window of an extraordinarily expensive shop in Walton Street. As the car screeched to a halt I leapt out and lurched in while Bridget parked and followed me, intentionally oblivious to the hoots and bad temper all around. I wasn’t, and so tried to look like a Bob Geldof, I-don’t-care-what-I-look-like-and-don’t-need-to-either sort of Chelsea fixture. With hindsight I think it’s unlikely I carried it off, but at the time my excitement and eagerness finally to buy something was such that it didn’t matter much.

Imagine my excitement: again, I was living the dream. Baby and children safely looked after (ie somewhere else), I felt anyone who saw me in Bridget’s black 4x4 would be bound to mistake me for a Wag being chauffered around London in search of Expensive Things for my dream home. Just so long as I didn’t get out

I stood in the hallowed building and gazed at this leviathan of soft furnishing. Slim black clad girls freshly out of Downe House hovered.

‘Wow Bridget!’ I enthused. ‘What do you think?’

‘Mmmm’ said Bridget, tellingly.

I sought to explain to her the error of her ways.

‘Just imagine: in the drawing room, back to the big window, facing the fire ....’

‘Yes.....’ she drew the word out and up leaving me in no doubt.

‘... or the sitting-room, half way down, making it into two distinct areas ...’ - a cunning one this: throughout, Bridget and He Who Knows had sought to teach me about giving rooms multiple uses.

‘Yes ....’ she was at it again

‘Or in our bedroom, at the foot of the bed, facing the window ...’ I wasn’t going to give in.

‘Yes ....’

I lost my nerve.

‘Bet it’s comfy!’ I almost begged as I dropped into it. Big mistake. Something in my hip pinched and I gasped, grabbing my side.

I squeezed my eyes tight shut as white light shot across my vision - and finally opened them to a Damascene revelation.

‘The walls!’ I puffed.

‘What?!’ Bridget and the Downe House lovelies, all now worried and bending over me, were equally confused.

‘The wallpaper! It’s fab!’

Bridget straightened and looked around her. I could see the relief in her eyes. ‘Ah!’ she said, in a completely different tone. ‘I see what you mean. Yes .....’ thoughtfully this time, with no undertones of despair.

Suffice it to say that we left having ordered four large squares of the stuff in different colourways. Unspoken, the sofa was understood to be staying put (Bridget’s victory) but the hall walls looked to have a real future as things of great beauty (mine) and honour was satisfied. By the time I limped down the platform and collapsed onto the train, my heart was set on what I had already told Eeyore was the ONLY paper for us and I had in my mind a clear picture of the front hall, stairwell and landing in their full, finished glory.

For some reason the cost of the samples we had ordered rang no alarm bells. Eeyore - normally my early warning system in matters financial - was oblivious, and I hadn’t quite heard the lady and wouldn’t have been able to multiply the amount by the number of rolls even if I had. Inevitably, however, once we had lived with the four samples stuck on the wall for a bit and fallen completely in love with one of them, and indeed ordered 32 rolls of it, it transpired that this was no ordinary wallpaper. Oh no. This was handblocked, special width clever wallpaper worth its weight in gold for its wonderment value alone. A better woman than I would have ‘fessed up, gritted her teeth and gone to B&Q.

I, however, instantly saw this as yet another occasion when a largely absentee husband busy slaving hard elsewhere was a Godsend. Poor Eeyore never knew what hit him: unblinking I told him exactly how much our wall dressing was going to cost him and used a tone that expressed relief at such a reasonable total. Led entirely by the nose and my duplicity, he coughed up. Good lad.

Untold pounds passed from hand to hand and eventually a brown van from a very well known courier company arrived at breakneck speed in the yard. With loud thuds, six extremely battered boxes landed in the back hall, chucked in by a very grumpy man in a baseball cap. Given that they represented several months’ worth of mortgage repayments I felt entirely justified in yelling ‘OI!’ and, my blood up, proceeded to make sure he’d ALWAYS throw our deliveries at us by making him wait until I checked the contents. Sure enough, as I opened the top of the boxes I saw that more than half the rolls were dented. There was nothing for it: I made the chap take the whole lot back.

Three weeks later, a new and undamaged batch arrived in a brown van driven by a man in a nasty baseball cap. Imagine how my heart sank. But out hopped the lovely Nick, who proceeded to deliver six unbattered boxes with great care. Chatting amiably, Geordie on my hip, I fished out a roll to gloat - and let out a howl of anguish. Right pattern; wrong colour. A rather nasty shade of sick, as I recall.

Three weeks later, another new and undamaged batch arrived driven by Nick (still, unfortunately, with the nasty baseball cap - standard issue, it seems).

I do not exaggerate when I say that the entire household held it’s breath as I pulled open the first box ... and then exhaled with relief as I beamed at the baby.

‘Perfect.’ I said. Geordie grinned and waved a banana at the world in general.

But. What colour to do it? You would think that a family of reasonably intelligent, decisive adults would make short work of such a superficial question. Well you would be wrong: Steve the Painter (for such is his business name) has proved himself to be almost eerily patient as we have tried every colour, and every ridiculously named hue of every colour, under the sun. If the offering was black or white, or yellow or purple, it would be so much easier.

Plus, it’s a multi-faceted question: the walls and cupboards are going to be different one to the other, but what about the Aga surround and the island? We have a great many blue and green tiles on the walls – do we replace them (please, please no) and give ourselves a clean canvas, as it were? Does the island match the cupboards, or the blasted Aga surround, or does it do its own thing and go off-piste? Maybe a screeching yellow, or a gloss lime? Maybe not. Skirtings? Door surrounds? Radiators? How far up the back stairs do we go? Round the corner onto the landing? I can’t tell you how many people have been canvassed, and how many different answers we’ve had.

‘Oh don’t worry, it’s just paint’ some have said. Yes, thank you, I know it’s just paint. But it’s an expensive and laborious process this, and the upheaval is enormous and as a result I can quite see us living with our choices for the next 23 years, however we end up feeling about them. By which stage, let’s be honest, we’ll be in our mid-80’s and probably beyond caring.

And yes, it’s yet another first world problem. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem – for us, and for the long-suffering Steve, if for no one else. I’m not asking for sympathy, or even for advice (please, no more advice) but a modicum of ‘woman up and make a decision’ would be very welcome. Time is running out: Steve is off on his holidays on Friday, and after that is busy until Christmas.

I can feel a gin, a pin, a blindfold and a colour chart coming on.

To make matters worse, I found everything took four times longer than it should.

Take, for example, the night that I decided a large gin was the only answer – and then remembered that to reach the vital ice I had to don the wellies, coat and fleece, find a torch, unlock the front door and walk down the side of the house through the mud, negotiate my way across the yard around the many piles of building materials, the skip and the rubble-laden trailer, heave open the garage door, climb over the mower and get to the freezer. And then get back again. I think that’s when the Baileys discovered it’s new resting place just behind my head as I sat in the relative warmth of the sitting room/playroom (which used to be the dining room, with its quaint checked wallpaper ceiling) squinting at the telly through the narrow slit in my balaclava.

Moving the washing around was another source of endless entertainment. That Christmas Eve it involved negotiating three uncarpeted precipitous stairs in the dark (of course: no lights), climbing through the scaffolding that was holding up most of the back of the first floor, unloading the machine and bringing the wet washing downstairs through two stairgates to our friend’s spare (spare?) tumble dryer in the hall. (With no hot radiators, snow outside and our dryer – like BOTH our hoovers – too full of dust to be capable of anything at all, we had yet again become dependent on the largesse of our new friends who had supplied tea, sympathy, warmth and eventually even their precious white goods over the last few months until they must have been ruing the day we crash landed into their lives.) All the while of course I was trying to avoid the razor sharp carpet gripper with my bare feet – shoes were naturally out of the question as clacking on bare boards was bound to wake the Little Darlings and carpets were a thing of both the past and the future.

Although I have to admit that the then current state of domestic bliss was a wonderful excuse to actually do nothing at all much. Pot Noodles don’t deserve their bad press, and it’s surprising how quickly even very small babies get used to ready meals. Only once did Eeyore suggest a dinner party, and when we had both recovered from the scene of appalling violence that ensued, he admitted that perhaps he had been a little premature and ambitious. I found that with a little application, a quick coffee after the morning drop-off could be stretched to nearly lunch time – although after a few months the invitations to partake in friends’ kitchens seem to have dried up, and Jabba and I had begun to take our conviviality elsewhere. There genuinely wasn’t any point in doing more the bare minimum of cleaning – and it’s surprising how very bare that can be. And while even I insisted on clean school uniform, it’s amazing how seldom I found needed to change, so long as I occasionally varied the very top layer of ubiquitous squeaky nylon fleece.

At Angus’s scarily trendy London school, my days had been fraught with fashion terrors: utterly unable to keep up with matching Prada outfits to handbags, I endured degrees of humiliation you can probably only imagine, until I grew up and begin to derive a perverse pleasure from dressing much as I do now. On the same basis I used to make a point of taking my Beloved’s grandmother’s knackered Nissan Micra on the school run, partly because I loved showing I had it, partly because it was fun putting Angus’s quarter size double bass through the sun roof (seriously), and partly so I could nip into the Holland Park parking spaces under the very wheels of the blacked-out Range Rovers with personalised number plates. Until some cow backed straight into me (and very nearly over me) and consigned that valiant little machine to the great scrapheap in the sky.

Nonetheless, Christmas came and went as Christmases usually do, and despite the trials and tribulations – or perhaps because of them - it was an exceedingly jolly one. There’s nothing like the shared experience of battling through something together to lift the spirits and in a funny way, take the pressure off: silly hats and Christmas pud under the Berlin Wall was a hoot and as there was simply no way I could produce Victorian garlands, hand sugared almonds and artfully distressed individual snowflake place mats, I too was relaxed and happy. Perhaps the imminent prospect of a break from it all helped as well: mercifully a temporary end was in sight. I, my husband, Angus and Isobel were off skiing.

Looking back, I’m not quite sure why the promise of this might have lifted my mood. Nor indeed do I know why I thought it was going to be such a great break – clearly, it was only ever a disaster waiting to happen. I was the only one of us who had ever been before, and when I had last been, seventeen years ago, I distinctly remembered making my sister swear on her eyesight that she would never let me go again. I can’t now remember quite why I hated it so much, which is presumably why I decided to go again – but of course this time I was also at the head of a massively dysfunctional family group which included one grumpy stressed hypochondriac with funny feet, one diva who would only wear pink and didn’t until the day of our departure realise that cold snow would be involved, and one future SAS member who couldn’t see why he might possibly need any lessons. Geordie was the lucky one: he was staying at home with the sainted Kirsty.

With not one, not two but THREE serving Army officers in the immediate family, we seem to be spending more time than I thought we ever would on and around Salisbury Plain. (Which is a long time and way from Lincolnshire, but I digress … already …)

Last weekend we were down there for RIFLESFEST. With live music, food from all around the world, demonstrations and opportunities to ‘have a go’, it was a day for the families and friends of serving soldiers and veterans to get some understanding of what the role of a modern soldier involves. It was a celebration of all things RIFLES Regiment, and it was also a goodbye to Warrior, the infantry fighting vehicle in use for almost 40y which is about to be replaced by Boxer.

We went for a 3 minute drive in the back of one of these beasts, each of us dressed in a helmet, earphones, goggles and body armour, and we were all astounded by the discomfort, the dust, the jolting, the lack of space and above all the mind-numbing bone rattling noise. ‘What’s the longest you’ve been in one of these things?’ I asked the hapless chap detailed to ride with us. ‘Eighteen hours’ he said ‘in Canada, in the summer.’

None of us squashed into that deafening metal box could even begin to imagine what that would be like. The mere idea of enduring that, and then of getting out and being expected to exercise judgement on any level and to any purpose, is incredible. Army life, it seems to me, is either uncomfortable, dull, relentless, dangerous or terrifying - how grateful we should all be that there are people among us prepared to put up with it.

Let’s be clear: I am hugely proud of my son, daughter-in-law and brother, and of what they do for a living on behalf of all of us. But I don’t come over all goose-pimply at the mere mention of the Army, and we don’t – despite the above – come from an historically army family. And yet, and yet … last Saturday there wasn’t a dry eye on the Plain. Speaking as someone who always thanks her car after a long journey, I felt for every single person there who was moved by the dignified departure of a token Warrior from the square, accompanied by an honour guard and Buglers. As the Commanding Officer said, these vehicles have demonstrably saved lives, and have acted as part of a deterrent worldwide for forty years – we owed them the dignified departure they were given.

And amongst all this were the families. British, Nepalese, Cameroonian, Fijians but all Riflemen – including the female soldiers who, when canvassed at regular intervals proudly insist on being called ‘Riflemen’ – working and playing together with their families in the hot sun of a modern Wiltshire summer. Proud to be involved, and to have their relevance marked and acknowledged – the ones that stay behind, after all, make sacrifices too, be they the children missing a parent while they’re away on exercise or deployment, or the partner carrying the domestic load single handed, or (dare I say it?) the parent or sibling wishing the family was complete.

If pride really is a sin then I’m proud to say that sometimes, just sometimes, I’m an unashamed sinner.

That first winter wound up slowly into a wonderful snowy one. In the city we had failed to notice the passing of the seasons and the only weather that impinged in the hell of rush hour was rain. The subtleties were lost on us – but now, although still inevitably rushing for the train, we had the space to notice the first frosts that brought a peculiar quiet light to the empty countryside. In the summer the roads were buried between high hedges and invisible from the house. In the autumn they were laid bare, and the winter left them shining with frost before burying them again in snow – it seemed that whichever the season we were not going to be subjected to ugly grey ribbons as in London. On one run we spotted a heron, a herd of deer, hares, a moorhen and a kite all in the first two miles.

With luck, having dropped my beloved at the station, I would be able to creep back into the sleeping house and under the covers for a sneaky ten minutes before the second start to the day. I defy any mother not – at least sometimes – to hear the stirring of her offspring without experiencing a certain sinking feeling at the prospect of starting the whole daily merry-go-round again. Pathetic though it may sound, the quiet snatched trips to the station in the morning could be very therapeutic.

My fortieth loomed. Gone were all plans of a marquee job on the neatly manicured lawn. It looked like the Somme out there. Not gone was the post-baby weight, and there was no way I was going to wallow at my own party. I said I didn’t want to do anything, and I got my own way. Instead, we agreed that as the day coincided with the end of term for Angus, I would leave Isobel and Geordie at home and collect him from his terribly smart school miles away, en route for London and dinner at Ken Lo’s. (Remember, I had been away for a while by now, and this seemed the height of excitement.) Then the night at the flat, and home the next day for Christmas and jollity and all the rest.

At 2am on the morning of my birthday, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Geordie suffocating. Newly enamoured Sylvia was out, Eeyore in London – I had begun to see that a pattern was emerging: whenever anything went really horribly wrong, I was always the only adult present. Puffers and the nebuliser had no effect and at 3am I rang 999. Forty scary minutes later I could see the stupid ambulance going backwards and forwards along the road at the end of the drive, presumably being driven by a blind driver with a blind co-pilot. I stood with a very blue Geordie in my arms, in the door of what remained of the original dining room flashing the 32 light bulbs on and off furiously in an attempt to get their attention. Finally they got the point and came haring through the yard and up the drive, arriving with a screech.

Isobel was deeply reluctant to wake and get into a dressing gown: in front of two burly and increasingly agitated paramedics I couldn’t resort to yelling that she was a selfish pig and she would do as she was told, NOW. Only when Geordie became too ill to notice that I had handed him to the driver could I simply pull her from her bed and force her into the ambulance, dressing gown and slippers in hand. Unbelievably she continued to complain all the way into town; my vicious, scorching stares for once failed to scare her into behaving.

As is the way with these things, Geordie quickly rallied once safely in A&E. Indeed, we were home by 10am – Isobel now silent, after I managed to snarl at her in private. The lovely taxi driver who brought us back didn’t even blink when I realised I had left my handbag in the hospital and burst into tears in the back of his car. He rang to check it was in fact there, took us home, refused to let The Guys pay him, went back into town to get it, brought it back and wouldn’t let me pay him for the second trip. Briefly the day looked up, and as ever the kindness of strangers took me by surprise.

I decided I needed an hour’s sleep before setting off to get Angus and celebrating my birthday. Handing everyone over to Sylvia, I went to empty the washing machine first. Big problem. I climbed into the back of the sitting-room where it was currently lurking, to find The Guys had put scaffolding up across the front of it, full though it was of wet washing.

At the time, it seemed like very nearly the final straw. I admit that my shoulders went down, my head drooped, and I just stood there, looking at it. Everything was such a flipping struggle: children, building works, the dirt, Christmas looming - even hanging the washing seemed an insurmountable problem.

An arm went round my shoulders. ‘Ooops Pol’ said Uncle Pete, the foreman. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort it.’ And they did. I went upstairs and shut the door and nobody disturbed me, and the phone didn’t ring, and nobody started drilling or sawing or banging, and they even – for the first time in months - turned the radio off. And after an hour I came back down to find that Sylvia had hung up the washing and fed the children and The Guys had got me a cake and a card and then it suddenly was too much and I started to cry. Poor things – nobody quite knew what to do next so we all ate the cake, and felt much better.

And from then on, it just went on getting better and better. An easy drive, a lovely carol service, getting Angus back, a delicious dinner and a night in the Big Smoke. It was extraordinary how detached from London I felt: my home for 39 years was familiar but completely unappealing. Grey, dirty, full of people, above all loud – we talked that night about how strange it was that as a family we had completely moved on, with never a backward glance. Understandably, at 81/2 Angus had been unsure about leaving the only home he had ever known but now he, perhaps more than all of us, was sure we had done the right thing. He loved the space, the colours, the freedom, his bike, the dog – and the scale of his new life. Eeyore and I looked at each other and grinned. If only from a distance, the downsides didn’t seem so bad.

Isobel and I, when planning the business year, make sure to include holiday time in our calculations.

It’s difficult working together in a mother/daughter partnership if you also happen to like each other enough to want occasionally to go on holiday together. Which we do: most of the time we get on like the proverbial house on fire, and we’re determined not to let our beloved L&F change that, so we make sure to do non-work things together every now and then. From an L&F point of view ‘July and August’ we say to each other, every year without fail ‘are always quieter. School holidays and all.’

But it’s uncanny how often the proverbial hits the fan, in one way or another, when we are operating single-handed.

Two years ago this month I was having a wonderful time fishing north of Inverness when Isobel’s beloved – and I really do mean beloved companion Petal, the iconic puss-shat with a ginger bum hole (IYKYK), had to be helped to breathe her last at the ripe old age of 18. That fabulous furry feline knew exactly how her owner was feeling at any given moment and was frequently literally worn as a comforter, wrapping herself around Whizz’s neck just when she was needed most.

Last year I was back in the same place at the same time when we had a massive order from a very well known Formula One racing team. So huge were the quantities of mats and coasters involved that we assumed it was a joke – it wasn’t. ‘Right!’ I said, coming over all Anneka Rice ‘Forget the fish: I’m on the next flight down to help!’ No need of course: after a couple of sleepless nights and 18hr days Isobel had it all nailed.

And this week, (with me guess where), we seem to have had our busiest ever, non-Fair retail day.

What is going on?! Definitely, shopping patterns are changing. What used to be guaranteed down times aren’t any longer; it used to be that on-line sales would be quiet mid-week and build to a crescendo at around Sunday lunch time, and that public holidays would be dead as the proverbial doornail. Not so now. And in 2025 we even had orders pinging into our website on Christmas day.

Don’t get me wrong. Nothing makes me happier nowadays than staggering to the Post Office under the weight of prepared orders. Maybe we need to learn to play the system and book ourselves more holidays. Certainly we have got it majorly wrong this year, and I seem to be spending much of August on the road filling in down here and up there and generally displaying my truth, that a work/life balance is a close relative of the unicorn. But who cares? We have bought Sizzles her life jacket with a dorsal fin à la Jaws; Callie and Islay are unwittingly trotting off to their own little kennels-based holiday just down the road from here and of course, of course, it seems that the weather has broken and we will spend pretty much the rest of the month sheltering from torrential rain.

We call it ‘summer’.

Back in the real world I quite often found that the best part of the day was when I drove Eeyore to the station at 6.45am. Assuming we got out without waking a child or two (never a given: being largely deaf he claims to have no idea how much noise he makes) we’d set off in with our hearts in our mouths in case someone heard us. Poor Sylvia got used to turning over and going back to sleep for another half an hour: the cars were parked under her room. But for the mother of any small child, the idea of starting the day proper at a time with a six in it is too frightening for words.

That first winter wound up slowly into a wonderful snowy one. In the city we had failed to notice the passing of the seasons and the only weather that impinged in the hell of rush hour was rain. The subtleties were lost on us – but now, although still inevitably rushing for the train, we had the space to notice the first frosts that brought a peculiar quiet light to the empty countryside. In the summer the roads were buried between high hedges and invisible from the house. In the autumn they were laid bare, and the winter left them shining with frost before burying them again in snow – it seemed that whichever the season we were not going to be subjected to ugly grey ribbons as in London. On one run we spotted a heron, a herd of deer, hares, a moorhen and a kite all in the first two miles.

Read more

I was learning every day. It is, for example, fascinating to know just how fast you can bath two small children when it’s so cold that you get dragon’s breath in the bathroom. I actually began to look forward to our nocturnal ambulance dashes sometimes: asthma’s serious (and doesn’t appreciate cold, damp and dust – who’d have guessed?) but at least hospitals are warm.

There were many golden moments scattered among the

debris. The trips we made to the top of the scaffolding – we all got up there at some point, and a large number of visitors too, over the weeks. The view was spectacular, not only across the rooves of the house but over the fields to villages so far away I couldn’t believe I was naming them correctly. A very jolly afternoon was spent up there with an Ordnance Survey map, checking places off one by one – until the thing blew away, of course. Rolling golden fields rippling in the endless wind; a combine so far away it was inaudible, seemingly dragging a duller colour behind it as it took the movement out of the acres. Miles of waving green trees, huge clouds, skylarks and buzzards – once again, W12 seemed like another world.

The Friendly Farmer reappeared very shortly after his first visit and before we knew it we were holding the Meet – and just take a moment to picture the very English, very traditional scene: the Hall; hounds; huge hunters; the Pink. That morning I reflected that while I had had no idea what my rash promise entailed, I had been quietly confident that I, in my new neoprene wellies, would stage manage the whole thing perfectly – the golden autumn day, the magnificent mounts, the gleaming hounds, the creamy tight jodhpurs, the whole thing.

And then it rained. Not London rain: dense, freezing, brown Lincolnshire rain with bits in it. As I staggered round the field with a large plate of small sausages held aloft I had to strain to hear the polite ‘No thank you’s of tense riders in clean gloves, through the whine of the wind and the calling (I gather that’s what you call it) of hounds. As horses turned and champed and strained to be off I had cause to thank heavens for the pretty red ribbons round the tails of many of them: in the half light they were often the first sight I got of their huge bottoms as they backed onto/into/over me. Eeyore had much more luck: a foot taller, he had the advantage of height – and indeed of having something people wanted. There’s nothing like the odd glass or three of fortifying fortified wine if you’re about to face death on a huge mound of muscle thundering across uneven ground and huge hedges in the freezing gloom. Finally, a blast on the horn and they were off, filtering slowly through the gateway onto the track and round the back of the house into the true middle of nowhere beyond. It was only when one leviathan kicked out backwards and split the 4x4” solid oak gatepost that I realised the pretty red ribbons were more than decorative – and even Eeyore got the point when a second lashed out and caught the beast behind it a fine smack on the nose. Much squealing and reversing into others before finally they were all through, and my beloved and I were left in a morass that would not have looked out of place in 1914 France. We looked at each other, and the clearing up that needed doing. ‘Bugger it’ said Eeyore: we slung all the empties, the glasses, the uneaten bangers and mince pies in the boot of the Land Rover and slammed the door on it. Then we put the waterproofed baby in his seat in the knackered old Renault, and set off after the hunt.

One of our better decisions, really. Rain, potholes, lurching across the countryside down neglected tracks with the heater full on and the baby spark out – bliss. Hours we spent, chasing cold wet hardy souls and trying to think like a fox. In this both we and the entire hunt singularly failed: the Antis would have been happy as nothing was killed – or even woken from lovely warm dens and scared into making a run for it. They’re not stupid these foxes: foul weather and a fright v staying put and waiting for it all to go away. No contest.

Added to which we had already commented on the total lack of foxes. Back in Shepherd’s Bush we had been woken nightly by the beggars as they tipped up bins, bonked each other senseless and howled with devilment in the middle of the road at 2am. The place had been thick with the things: big shiny and muscley they were clearly in the fantastic condition only a proper diet of left-overs and cold takeaways could provide. But here, in the wilds where they were required to fend for themselves and live in muddy holes instead of warm toolsheds, we had yet to see even one.

‘That Ban was a complete waste of time.’ Eeyore muttered. ‘Silly arses. Look.’ He had a point. We were nothing like alone: the foot followers had been joined by upwards of twenty cars and as the day wore on a camaraderie developed. We learnt that several of the Hunt were very new to the sport and had deliberately learnt to ride once it became apparent that the Ban was imminent.

We only headed for home when we had to put the tea on for the ravening hordes. What they didn’t eat at the beginning they hoovered at the end: all the bangers and mince pies plus all the fruitcake Emma had brought and pints of dark black tea from Sue’s huge teapot decorated with hunting scenes. Great tales of horrible falls, scratched faces, torn gloves, steaming wool and mud – and a marvellous comment overheard as I passed round the plates. It served to remind me just how newly on the scene we were - and how competitive people are to be the first to know everything about incomers.

Two elderly ladies in full hunting garb were discussing the family who had bought the Hall. In particular, they were commenting on the big age gap between Angus and Isobel. Clearly completely unaware that she was talking in front of me about my children, and with not a blush for her immortal soul, one told the other that there had been another child between the two, who had very sadly died. This was a fact apparently. I’m afraid I didn’t behave very well.

‘No! Really?’ I exclaimed.

‘Absolutely.’ I was told. ‘Very sad. She was only little, too. These things of course take a while to get over.’

‘If ever!’ I agreed, as I smiled sweetly and sadly and moved on. To my certain knowledge there was never an extra, and a nice person would have said so and not told the story later – but as I said, I’m afraid I didn’t behave well. I very often don’t.

Notwithstanding my wonderful life, for which I am genuinely grateful and which believe me I don’t for one second take for granted, I am weary.

I am tired and bored – almost beyond measure – of Doing Battle. Endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. The saga of my passport continues, amusing to all (bar one) and I do battle. I have an ongoing argument with Vodafone over two accounts that were fraudulently opened in my name, and which I can’t access to cancel because I don’t know the answer to the security questions posed by someone pretending to be me. I didn’t choose the questions, so I can’t give the answers: I do battle.

Then there’s the moron who drove into me last year and, despite witnesses, insists it was my fault and is pursuing me for his repairs and costs – so I do battle. Then there’s something that happened in May 2026 which has involved mediation rather than the small claims court, and which we last week WON, but over which I still had to do battle. (Excitingly, I have had to promise not to tell anyone anything about it, so I won’t. Unless you ask me privately in which case I most definitely will, but will then deny culpability, as They did.)

My question is – when did things become so complicated? My pa used to come home from work every evening, have supper and then take a whisky to ‘do some writing’ at his desk in the dining room. This always meant his diary entry – he had one for every single day from when he was told to start writing one at the age of 16, to shortly before he died at 86 - and then, but only sometimes, some home admin. He was running two houses, a fulltime job and doing family paperwork for seven, but he never seemed to have the volume of nonsense going on that blights life today.

And this of course in a time well before home computers and copiers or scanners, or mobile phones, or 24hr banking and all the rest. We still have hand-written copies of hand-written letters he wrote, or carefully annotated paid bills showing payment details, and a brief note of any conversation that had taken place on the subject - although who knows when he ever managed to make a phone call, given the hours he worked.

Surely this bit of modern life should be more straightforward than it has ever been? The speed of access to people; the immediacy of pressing buttons to transfer files and access information and advice; the fact we no longer need to photocopy and file reams of paperwork – why haven’t we have more time to smell the flowers and to look at the view and to contemplate our navels, if that’s what we feel like doing?

I blame ‘Reply All’. And the way nobody takes responsibility for seeing a job through from beginning to end any more. Too many cracks have appeared, through which too many things slip. Oh – and part-time working. (The idea of which is clearly fabulous, but the reality is less than ideal for anyone other than the worker.)

Do I sound irritable and old? I’m sorry. It’s just that I feel both those things at the moment. And I’m only writing this to avoid having to ring Scottish Power for the eleventeen billionth time to … oh, forget it. It’s just too boring. Bring back the World Cup, I say – or better yet, Wimbledon. Ooooh, or ‘I, Jack Wright’. And I haven’t yet done Wordle or Connections today: I tell you what, I’ll put the kettle on and see how many kittens have learned to play the piano since I last checked.

Suddenly, I feel much better.

The baby quickly learned to negotiate even the smallest gaps to escape our grasp. It was a sick twist of fate that contrived to give me a mountain goat/eel cross for a third child, after two couch potatoes. His main aim in life was always to be at the highest point in any room, and he could limbo under things and scale others to achieve his aim. Many hours did we while away trying to coax him back. Nursery rhymes, action songs, books, treats, threats; we tried them all. For a while we hoped his nickname, ‘Jabba’, might hold the key to his recovery. Star Wars aficionados among you will remember that Jabba the Hutt was a huge creature of prodigious appetite: we tried tempting our Jabba with everything from prunes – messily, his favourite for some months – to my mobile phone (which he enjoyed with an occasional squirt of orange juice), to no avail.

On one occasion I gave up and sent Whizz wriggling through the legs of a trestle table, recently and unthinkingly erected across her bedroom doorway, only for her to rediscover her dressing-up box and contents with squeals of ‘I remember this one!’ Twenty minutes later, tired of the Viking and Snow White prancing just beyond my reach, I closed the stairgate and went for a quick coffee, to find the electricity off again. Sometimes I am driven to think that God really must want me to drink alone before lunch.

At least while I was down in the breeze block kitchen Whizz and Jabba were able to indulge in their new, money-saving hobby; stripping wall-paper. It’s a messy job at the best of times but 30 years old woodchip applied as a means of anchoring blown plaster is in a league of its own. We should of course have been talking masks, those white paper Waking-the-Dead suits and plastic goggles. I however am talking a pair of small and determined children too young to know their rights. The upside is that it was all so much more cost-effective than decorators.

The kitchen floor went down. After much thought and discussion we had decided to follow the experts’ advice and put down a thick layer of extraordinarily expensive polythene as a damp proof, and then pour asphalt all over it. The reason for this was not only to help keep water out but to level the whole thing off: we had knocked together two rooms and a corridor, and if we weren’t to spend the rest of our lives tripping over things, this was the best plan. As we had already had to buy a house with high ceilings to stop Eeyore banging his head, I was keen to avoid having to move again to stop him stubbing his toes.

So one day a large white lorry appeared, manned by a series of very small, ultra lean men who were so dwarfed by the size of the cauldron on the back that I seriously doubted they were up to the job. In complete silence they simultaneously brewed up (inevitably) and fired up the huge vat, and in no time it began to vomit thick black stinky asphalt into ancient buckets so encrusted that they can only have held about a third of what they had been made to carry. In a constant stream four of these tiny men then ran the steaming pails through the building site into the putative kitchen where they poured them out onto the floor and the other two, with kneepads and gauntlets on smoothed and wiped and pushed and cajoled this stuff into all the cracks and crooks and corners. Once I removed my Health and Safety hat and understood that these guys knew exactly what they were doing – and by the looks of at least two of them, had been doing it for at least half a century - there was a certain poetry to it: the rhythm and their silence in the chaos that surrounded them was curiously soothing. Foot by foot the green polythene turned black, and the sulphurous fumes wound their way through the rest of the house. Finally, it was done.

What had previously been flattened rubble was now a 600sq foot gleaming, steaming black slab and the room looked huge and hellish. Still in silence the asphalters had a brew from the back of the lorry in miniature versions of the buckets they had been carrying back and forth, got in and left. I stood waving them off feeling embarrassed by my irrelevance in the whole process, and then went in to stop the baby making his mark.

4½ months into the six month (yeah, right) Phase One of our building project and we reached ground zero. From that point on, we were assured, the only way was up. To celebrate, The Guys rigged a flagpole on the top of the house and proudly hoisted the red and white English flag. Until Eeyore (a Northumbrian of Scots descent) came home and hotly insisted it be removed. Unfortunately the only St Andrew’s cross we could find was nailed to the wall over Angus’s bed, covering a particularly mouldy bit of wallpaper but nothing daunted, in short order there was a real flag cracking in the wind off the steppes. The one advantage (apart from the views) of living on what passes for a hill around here is that kites and flags perform spectacularly.

We reviewed progress. In eighteen-odd weeks we had pulled down a perfectly good bit of house and replaced it with another perfectly good bit of house, removed three internal walls and six doorways, poured gallons of asphalt and rerouted more piping than any of us knew we had. The long, high, narrow kitchen on the dark side of the house that the first set of builders painted a particularly gastric shade of euch that only a mother would recognise had become (temporarily) a Stygian 9’ square with a towering breeze block wall. With all of us in there and the little heater, the oven and all four burners on, it was almost warm. We still had newts in the cellar and the inside of the back door still showed canine tooth marks but He Who Knows assured me that the beginning of the end was in sight. And I have to say, I was ready for it.

I would like to introduce you all to Hassan.

Hassan is a Somali gentleman, whose black cab took me across London the other evening. Done up to the nines I was, all ready in the heat for a posh do at the base of the Tower of London and, as is my way, feeling like a hick let loose in the Big Smoke and wondering whether I could manage my (miniscule) heels. It was about 34° at 6pm and I was a bit fraught, and the first thing this total stranger did was wind down his window as I crossed the pavement to get in, and tell me I looked lovely.

Now in this day and age that is probably frowned upon. But I tell you, at that precise moment he made me very happy. Instantly I walked taller, and then sat straighter, and as he fiddled with shutting the windows and turning on the air conditioning, I began to relax and enjoy my evening – not something I would have thought likely, ten minutes previously.

We then had an hour of constant conversation as we crept from SW1 to EC3. We covered everything from Islam, to the price of cats; the penal system to immigration; the Archers to Aldi v Lidl. He loves his wife very much and does exactly as he is told. He reads voraciously, everything from philosophy to cookery books, in his second language. His 10y old son is cricket crazy, and his 12y old daughter has just stopped being intelligent and now communicates in grunts – he asked how long that goes on for, and I told him not to hold his breath. He asked what I thought about God and I told him. He told me that all Livery companies are full of toffs, and archaic – I agreed with part of the second half of that but roundly disabused him of what I called the ‘lazy assumptions’ he made in the first half: we had a hearty discussion which I’m sure we both felt we won, and generally had a terrific time on what should by rights have been a long and tedious crawl through London.

And my point is this. That that was a real conversation. We did tricky subjects, and told each other how we felt about personal things, and we both risked causing offence – but neither of us did, and so neither of us took any, either. We challenged and discussed and shared, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves – and I can say that without fear of contradiction because when we got to where we were going, he lopped a tenner off the fare saying ‘You are in my top four passengers ever.’ To which of course I replied, ‘Top four? Top FOUR? That means I’m your fourth favourite. I’m insulted Hassan – who were the others for crying out loud? Mother Teresa? Tom Cruise?’ And he laughed, and we shook hands through his window, and wished each other a long and happy life, and he drove off.

What a wonderful experience. What a shame life isn’t more like that across the world. I know – endearingly/irritatingly naïve of me to hope for something so impossibly out of reach. But every journey starts with a single step, and if we all take enough single steps …. oh, just talk to your cabbie, OK? And if you meet one called Hassan, with a lovely wife and a cricketing son and a monosyllabic daughter, tell him I say hello.

And sitting here now, in an impossibly hot corner of Lincolnshire, it’s right by my side where it has been ever since. It’s a bit more battered now, but hardly: a dog got one corner of it at some point, and the lid has come off the popper on the strap that does it up, but it has been in daily – and often hourly – use for the last 43 years and it has been through fire, flood and pestilence with me, and has travelled everywhere I’ve been (in the days when I had a bloomin’ passport) and in general it has weathered those years far better than I have.

Those who laugh at it are challenged to a race. And without exception, by the time they have woken whichever device they claim is superior to mine, scrolled, poked, flicked right or left and said ‘Aha!’ I have found the date required, and put the kettle on. I don’t have to charge the thing (greener), it can’t be hacked, and it’s the ultimate in reusable office equipment, carrying on as it does year to year.

The miracle is that I have never really, properly lost it. This from a woman who is constantly in search of keys, glasses, more keys, dark glasses, the jug I just put down, the parcel in my hand, the garage keys, the office keys, the car keys, the door keys … you get my drift. But on the very rare occasion that it is mislaid, I kid you not the panic in the house is frightening. We all know how dependent we all are on it, and it is treated with just reverence as a result. Nothing less than the full respect it deserves as a long-serving, uncomplaining member of the household.

I truly love it, and it is in my will that it is to come with me in my coffin and thence into the fiery furnace because to be without it, dead or alive, is beyond imagining. And I will need it, of course, where I’m going – if only to know where I’m going, and when I’m due there.

And why suddenly this love letter to a paper and leather book that rules my life?

Because it dawned on me just now, as I sat to write this, that without it I would really struggle to remember what this last week has held. It’s a means of looking both forward and back. It reminds me that I went to the theatre in Nottingham, and to Norfolk to see Isobel’s new house, and that we had a rather heavy and somewhat saddening phone call on Tuesday evening, and some exciting L&F business meetings and conversations (eek), and that the car has to be in the garage later today and that tomorrow is … well, it’s another day. It must be. My Filofax says so

.

Keen to defray the £6,000-odd cost of a new one, we considered selling the carcass of the old. I pored over the classifieds in the back of all the obvious magazines and found someone who claimed to buy Agas whatever their condition. I rang him and told him that ours was a thousand years old and had seen considerable service and was recently condemned, but he still suggested £1,000 and said he would come the next day to see it with a view to paying up and taking it away on the spot. To my surprise he did: bang on time an ancient pick-up truck drove up the drive and dropped it’s front bumper on the gravel. A very small man in a dirty black leather jacket got out and kicked it back on, clearly used to the procedure. Once inside he checked over the brooding hulk of cold cast iron, sucked his teeth and said it was missing a critical part. This, he said, was why it hadn’t been lit in the last ten years. I told him it most assuredly had, and he said that even if that was the case, he couldn’t possibly now pay us anything over £200 for it.

‘Bother’ I said. ‘Poor you – all that way! Have a cuppa before you go.’

He hummed and hawed and rang his boss and sucked his teeth and for my benefit told the boss it was a useless pile of junk. I took the phone and told the boss in person that it wasn’t to be relit, either. I handed the phone back and there was a pause while more biscuits were eaten. Then he coughed up £1000, dismantled the thing and left. Result!Or the dreaded tank room. As a problem it pretty much sorted itself out, by catching fire.

Returning one morning we found clouds of smoke bellying out of the chimney in the boiler room. Knowing for a fact that there was a 2000 litre tank sitting just under it, containing we knew not how much heating oil (obviously the ancient gauge had long since given up) I rang 999 and within an astounding eight minutes the fire brigade arrived. From the other end of the drive the children and I watched, our hands over our mouths. The children were hoping and praying that there would be the most almighty bang and huge excitement: surprisingly, I was not.

Once the fire was out and what remained of the jackdaws nest that had ignited was a smouldering pile outside the garage, a very nice – and rather dashing, of course – fireman boss took me to one side. Kindly but firmly he pointed out that underneath a bedroom and bathroom was not a clever place for an oil tank. Indeed it was apparently an illegal place for an oil tank. I pointed out how old it was and told him it was about to be moved and over tea and biscuits with them all, outlined the bare bones of the Great Plan. They were all as lovely as you would expect, and made all the right noises, and let Angus and Isobel crawl all over the fire engine – until someone selfishly called for their help and they left at speed. Little did we know it, but one of them was to spend a sizeable chunk of his down time with us over the next few months: his dad turned out to be our plumber.

Angus rang daily from school ostensibly to check on progress generally, but only really to find out whether or not we’d got round to removing the revolting carpet in his bedroom. He did have a point of course: we realised that the rugs covering the bigger rips weren’t enough when the baby was found getting through one of the holes during an unscheduled game of pre-bath hide and seek. It was a good thing really and the carpet clearly had to go anyway. White shag pile, compressed over twenty years and now more grey than intended, was never our thing. More alarming was the fact that as we pulled him out a chunk of floorboard came too. Happily woodworm, not deathwatch, and good to find it before the new carpet went down – if we ever got to that point. During a fleeting visit Eeyore assured me that close calls were all part of the experience, and left me to reflect that we were becoming very good at finding silver linings.

Days began to fall into a pattern. The usual family stuff wound round the daily plan changes and decisions involved in any building project. We moved rooms a lot to begin with, but only downstairs. The Aga gone, the existing kitchen was demolished and breeze block wall went up across one end of it. With a new electric stove and oven in it and a three bar electric heater this 9’ square became our temporary kitchen, and as the days shortened and there wasn’t any heating, it quickly became the most popular bit of the house.

In went a four seater Ikea table (courtesy second hand of Kensington Godmother) and a highchair, and I found that from my seat at one end I could tip back and reach the sink, stove and cupboards with ease. The football sized golfball lights were still there of course, and now blinding in a much smaller space – they too added to the warmth, and some years on we all still look back on the little room with great affection. The lowering Berlin Wall cast a bit of a pall, but all in all it was warm, small and rather comforting in a sea of destruction and dust.

My no-nonsense mother rang. ‘Don’t forget’ she said ‘Children properly managed can be made to pay.’ As I’m one of five spanning twelve years, I should have realised she was speaking from experience. As the decimation of our dream home ran into the umpteenth month I began to see the wisdom of her words.

Since we had started tearing the place apart in pursuit of our Grand Architect’s grand architectural vision there had been no heating and the electricity had been intermittent at best. However, Angus and Isobel had begun to come into their own, proving better and cheaper than electric blankets. By sending them to bed at 7pm and 9pm I found I could get about six hours free warming of the marital bed before I callously - nay selfishly - moved them to their own beds, where they started the whole process again, largely oblivious.

As the first weeks wore on, we began to get to know the men with whom – although we didn’t know it at the time – we were going to spend much of the next three years. The two stonemasons were big chunks of men: creased brown faces and hands like ingrained baseball bats tossing great lumps of stone around as if they were sugar cubes. Gabby was the more talkative of the two, and the joker with the dashingly pierced ear who would leave silly faces drawn in old cement and cause Isobel to hoot with laughter. Ron was shorter and quieter and a real work horse – slowly, steadily, the extra bit was built on the back and the chaos deepened.

Pete was the boss on site and we got on famously until I realised that the urgency apparent in Isobel’s speedy dressing and running downstairs every morning wasn’t born of hunger, or a keenness (well, she’s a girl) to get to nursery. ‘Don’t you want to talk to ME?!’ I would hear myself bleat pathetically at the back of her head as she vanished through the door and round the corner. Soon he became known as ‘Uncle Pete’, and his place in the family’s lore was guaranteed. My father’s first words were apparently ‘Daddy bang!’. Not so Geordie’s. In due course ‘Unca Pete bang, Daddy Lunnon’ was his first sentence.

Later there would be Murray and Neil and Tim and Tom and Ben and Paul and Alan and two Chris’s and Les and the cornice chaps and the guys who laid the steaming asphalt for the kitchen floor, but to begin with it was just us, and it felt fine and doable.

As time wore on and the work rate ebbed and flowed but the mess stayed constant, cracks began to show. Not just in the fabric of the house, but in the relationships within it. Nobody makes me laugh like my sister, but the night when she and I found ourselves searching for the carrots in the unplastered shell of the new play room by the light of a mobile phone was real tester. While the snow blew outside and the wind howled down the unfinished chimney flue in the unlit, unlightable room, I thought I heard her squawking.

‘Was this really part of your Great Plan?!’ she yelled over the gale.

‘Pass me the phone!’ I screamed back.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her properly as she was bent double the better to scrabble, and sounding funny because her face wouldn’t move in the cold. But I have to say that I was playing for time: what I feared I’d heard stopped me in my tracks. This, especially coming from her, was like a bucket of cold water (appropriately, as it’s all we had at the time. The plumber had gone off for week – no-one knew why). Until that point my unrivalled powers of self-delusion had managed to persuade me that we were having a fantastic, character-forming time. In that instant I decided that actually, my character was fine thank you, and as formed as it was ever going to be. I began to feel quite strongly that I had had enough. Getting to this point might have been Eeyore’s mid-life crisis, bless him, but I felt I was about to have mine. I could feel it coming on. I felt I was owed it. (Actually, I felt I was owed six weeks in the Maldives.)

I came to fear for my marriage. It was, of course, Eeyore’s fault. He developed a nasty habit of answering ‘Oh it’s really not too bad!’ when asked how it was all going, and gradually that went from not being very funny, to being exceedingly unfunny. He began to give off a heady mix of smugness/burning martyr as he set off back to his calm, quiet, clean London bachelor pad each Sunday evening and very quickly it became almost too much to bear. As did his twice daily phone call from his centrally heated office, complete with running water and loos not stuck to the floor with gaffer tape.

To be fair, his positivity (everything’s relative, and my mother nicknamed him ‘Eeyore’ for good reason) was probably a good thing. It quickly became clear that we and the builders were going to have plenty of opportunity to get to know each other better. Everyone knows that building projects get bigger rather than smaller, but I think I can say without fear of contradiction that all involved were surprised at the extent of the problems we began to uncover.

Take the cellar. Two vaulted rooms complete with meat hooks, wine racks, the lot. And a whole load of newts, and salt leaching up through the brick floor, and two doors with rot and woodworm. Warmest place in the house, mind, but wet enough to need a whole new ventilation/circulation system installing to run twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The sump put in by our predecessors wasn’t cutting the mustard any more, and desperate times called for desperate – and expensive, needless to say – solutions. In went a network of fat wormy tubes suspended from the ceilings and a big metal bracket to hold the large box with the motor in it. And vents to the outside and a plug socket and a special gadget for measuring the humidity - to stop the labels coming off the wine, as far as Eeyore was concerned. I was more bothered that the house might sink if we didn’t do something about it.

Or the banisters on the front stairs. A big staircase, with original wrought iron stanchions which had (apparently) to stay, but which were only hip height on my beloved, and a really unpleasant accident waiting to happen. At some point somebody was going to tip over them and the fall of twenty odd feet onto the original tile floor beneath would be fatal. Nothing daunted, He Who Knows set about finding the original pattern and someone to cast them, and forty-three new uprights were cast somewhere in darkest Yorkshire.

Or the Aga. In the January, it finally died. The beast had only ever loved the Vendor, and it had disliked me from the minute I walked into the house. On any normal day it’s demise would have been a cause of great celebration but the fact that it chose to choke it’s last halfway through Geordie’s Christening simply underlined it’s vindictive streak. As it turned out, it had already tried to kill both me and the baby: in the early days, the marital bed in the room above it was pushed up against the flue. For some weeks I had marvelled at how soundly Geordie slept, but complained that I was getting blinding headaches. It was only after the Christening debacle (forty people, cold food, January, no heating) that the local experts declared the machine unfit for further purpose, and refused to relight it. It seems it had been leaking carbon monoxide into our bedroom. Nice.

I know it sounds too ‘Little House on the Prairie’ for words, but there really is a huge satisfaction to be gained from menial tasks. (So long as they aren’t undertaken too often of course: for better or worse I’m nobody’s idea of a traditional wife.)

I spent a very contented ten minutes hanging up three loads of washing the other night. The worst of the heat had been and gone, and the dogs truffled around the orchard very happily as I sorted through the huge pile. The calm that returned as order was restored; the satisfaction of a lot of clean laundry; being outside in soft warmth and light after so many days of feeling the weather was out to hurt me – it was lovely.

Thence to a major watering session, which was less restful but as satisfying. I love the smell of baked earth as it loosens and soaks up the moisture. It’s fanciful, I know, but sometimes I swear I can hear the sizzle as water and soil meet at the end of a very long, fryingly hot day. It’s almost as good as that wonderful feeling when you slowly put your head under the surface and you feel every hair follicle prickle and relax …

I worked my way from the back of the fruit cage, through the raised beds and the pickery, and then down the long bed that frames the back of the L&F office, and one side of the house. The hose almost reaches the front but not quite, and when I win the lottery I’m going to put in lots of outdoor taps right round the main building so I don’t have to spend hours fiddling with hozelock parts (other less good variations on a theme are available but unadvisable: take it from one who knows and don’t waste your money) as I link ever smaller lengths of pipe one to the next. It’ll make the whole place look like a giant hedgehog but it will make life so much simpler, and a long job a great deal shorter.

At the front of the house we have two giant pots each housing a wisteria. We resort to buckets for these, and it took us about ten years before we worked out that we could use the hose to fill them, rather than walk back and forth to the tap – honestly, for people who are generally thought to be passably intelligent on a good day, we never miss a chance not to cover ourselves in glory.

By now however you know me, and you will be waiting for the ‘but’ moment. Well, it came with a vengeance: no sooner had I done the washing and the watering, and well before I had had a chance to sit in the dusk and enjoy the smells and calm at the end of a long summer day … it began to rain. Out of nowhere, unheralded by either the usual drop in temperature or the (less reliable) met office. Short and sharp it was, but enough to make both the laundry and the beds wetter than I had left them not ten minutes before.

My new-found Zen state allowed me to chortle. At some point in the future the washing would inevitably be dry, and more rain now meant less watering tomorrow. My gin was a little more dilute than I had intended but that was probably a good thing, too. When life gives you lemons, after all ….

A week later, Jana was gone and Slovakian Eva arrived. She lasted three days, all of which she spent in bed with a phone clutched to her breast. It transpired that she had specifically asked for a small house in a town or city, no more than two children, no pets (we were waiting for the arrival of both a puppy and a kitten) and no housework. I felt quite strongly that that was exactly the kind of life I too would have liked, and arranged for her departure.

Then we had Emma, the unreliable but lovely Irish maternity nurse who would have been utterly fantastic had she not found herself the love of her life two days before joining us. Sadly he lived the other side of the country and she tended to nip off in the evenings to see him, often not returning until she could drag herself out of bed the following afternoon. As ever I quickly fell foul of the old ‘but what’s the alternative, and I can’t do without someone’ mindset, and we struggled on until she finally took it upon herself to go.

Next was Vicky, from plucky Poland. Small and muscly with an underbite like a piranha she loathed Isobel from the outset and scared us all with her habit of eating chicken drumsticks. I mean eating chicken drumsticks – bones and all. Happily, she rang at eleven one night when I was (of course) alone and waiting for the doctor to come and deal with Geordie’s asthma, and told me she had rolled the car we had provided. Could I come and get her please? The car, it transpired was on its roof and she had got out of the driver’s window. In desperation I rang the Tall Photographer and asked him to help – she had just dropped his completely competent and loveable au pair off after their joint English class, and cross thought I was, I really couldn’t expect her to walk five miles in the pitch dark with no torch after a fright like that.

Well if she wasn’t frightened before he collected her, she was very soon after. 6’ 7” in his socks, he towered over her in our kitchen and bawled her out. I should explain that he and his wife had had three Polish au pairs in the previous eighteen months, two of whom had written off cars. He was a very busy man, (ex-army, inevitably) and it was very late, and we were all very tired, but he laid into her with such eloquence and surgical precision that I too was left breathless. Something along the lines of ‘No wonder your fucking country gets invaded so often – you’re all completely fucking idle and useless. No way should any of you be driving anything other than fucking tanks –‘ at any moment I expected him to tell her to stand up straight, chin up chest out. She took it all like a small, frightening Polish au pair, and then dumbfounded all of us – even Tall Photographer (although to be fair he had slightly run out of puff by this point) - by saying that if we couldn’t provide her with another car, she wouldn’t stay.

By this point Angus was back at his boarding prep school 2 1/2 hours away, and needed collecting or delivering at least every two weeks. Add in matches and concerts, and Isobel going to and from the nursery she loved, and Geordie’s unreasonable demands as a three month old baby for feeding, changing, playing in the middle of the night, asthma trips to A&E at all hours, and an absentee husband. Oh, plus the building project we were planning, running a big house and garden and trying to establish a new life for ourselves, and what we had was an not unreasonably exhausted, frantic woman on the edge. I remember distinctly walking round the orchard with Geordie in my arms for hours, just howling – me, not him - not caring who heard. My biggest fear was post-natal depression. Having had it badly with Angus I most definitely didn’t want a repeat dose: clearly I needed more hands on deck, but I simply didn’t know where they were going to come from.

So we fell on the Swede – well, she wasn’t, but she looked it – with cries of joy, and open arms. Statuesque and dead pan she and her trusty dog looked after us for a whole year and was a wonder – but as Geordie got bigger, our needs changed. She was a nanny and we wanted a skivvy, so sadly our ways parted and she sallied forth to a Montessori training course at the other end of the country. Their gain was most definitely our loss.

Then it was lovely Polish Kate who looked exactly like Squareonthehypotenuse from Asterix. She was wonderful in every way and adored Isobel, whom she called ‘Birdie’ from the outset. Disastrously, she had to go after a month – some selfish excuse about an ill mother – and I was really in trouble.

Cue: Sylvia. Wonderful, saintly, rescuing Slovakian Sylvia, like salve on chapped lips and a ray of sunshine in a miserable world. 28, the loudest woman you ever heard, possessed of curves and a smile that made everyone cheer up (even me) and in due course made our builders the most attentive of artisans.

She got lost on her way to us (not a great sign, we couldn’t help thinking) so we met her on the village green and she followed us home. She was dressed to the nines in stilettos and spray on clothing, and her hair was dyed pillar box red. Not by nature one to blend into the background, she brought sweets for the children and spoke better English than we had dared hope. In our desperation we even agreed that the volume was good, due to Eeyore’s almost total deafness, and we took up her references telling ourselves that at the very least she’d get us through the beginning of the building works. Within a week she really was utterly indispensable – even Eeyore said so, and he manages to be a man both of few words and exacting standards. While I was always likely to grovel with gratitude at anyone who did anything to help, his opinion was much more masculine and unemotional, and not founded on relief.

And so, with help on hand and the new-found optimism that goes with a huge problem solved, we approached the beginning of the building works with excitement and enthusiasm. How the gods must have laughed.

I spent a day recently in a very hot and rather stuffy third floor room in the City of London, being trained. Jolly good it was too, and interesting, and at lunchtime I went into St Stephen’s Walbrook, the Wren church just behind my curious, wedge shaped building, and there was some sublime singing going on … and then I paid £6 for an iced mocha and went back to be trained a bit more.

For some reason church bells rang almost incessantly throughout the day, and alarmingly rather a lot of Chinooks kept flying low overhead. Early in the morning I had found the crowds of people moving, ant like and silent through the streets very peculiar: seemingly London’s now a place where people don’t really interact, and anyone speaking to a friend as they walk is usually glued to a mobile or two.

On the way home I walked through an almost unrecognisable City, where the new buildings dwarfed the old and roads I used to know had been pedestrianised or built on. The livery halls, once the focus of awe and aspiration, adorned as so many are with spectacular statuary and decoration, had shrunk into their surroundings and seemed to be trying to push themselves backwards into obscurity. Plate glass and bizarre watery installations dazzled and sparkled at every turn. Electric bikes clustered at the traffic lights like silent flies, and the familiar red buses and black taxis, contentedly belching diesel, were entirely absent. The quiet hum of rechargeable delivery vehicles and Ubers was just about discernible but the overall effect was disorientating and the silence unnerving.

I had no idea where I was in the square mile, and eventually resorted to Google maps, walking around as glued to my screen as everyone else. Once I remembered to look all ways at every junction, and most of the time between, I made it safely down to Moorgate tube and then to Kings Cross and hopped on a speedy train – plenty of room, and air conditioning, and it wasn’t delayed and we didn’t break down – and when I got to Grantham I leapt in the car and nipped home and lo! In no time at all I was cool, in the garden, listening to the skylarks and smelling the peonies and watching the cows.

Thirty years ago I worked in the City and loved it. Really loved it – I knew it well and felt the buzz and thrived on long hours and late nights. I cheered with the rest when the bullion lorries went by, and lunched at my desk and had a stock of new pairs of tights in my desk drawer against the inevitable ladder that would start at the most inopportune moment. I muscled my way onto the tube morning and evening and was in the gym by 0700 five days a week and despite the insufferable attitude of some of my male colleagues, and all the cigarette smoke, it was exciting and fun and adrenalin-filled.

Had you told me then that life in a very rural backwater would one day make me very happy, I would have thought you were barking.

But it does. It truly does. The space, and the air, and the smells and the smiles … And despite being a Londoner born and bred – in fact, within the sound of Bow bells, I gather – I’m a big fan of ‘home is where the heart is’. I certainly know where mine now lies.

In the spirit of inclusion – and because I needed her help – she came to my brother’s wedding in Suffolk ten days after Geordie was born. And because it was easier and quicker to do it myself, I packed everyone for two nights away, did the baby, shut the house and drove everyone - Eeyore was to meet us there.

I was enormous – no other word for it – and she was gobsmacking in leggings, heels and a spray on t-shirt. I am not exaggerating when I say that when we stopped at a motorway service station, I found Isobel sheltering from a light summer shower beneath the extraordinary bust of our friend from Prague. People were literally craning to watch this 6’ goddess with questionable dress sense walk past, and she was loving it and I was irritated and exhausted and sore and fraught and, I freely admit it, less than sympathetic when she arrived back at the car and calmly announced that she had lost Isobel. As I squeezed Geordie between me and the steering wheel to feed him, I suggested she might like to bloody well go and find her – surprised, she sauntered off and when Angus appeared with Isobel in tow, we then had to wait another twenty minutes before the Nubile Nymph appeared with a large cup of coffee in one hand, smiling gently. I gritted my teeth and we set off again, to the hotel where we were to stay the Friday night.

We were met by Chelsea Godmother (to Isobel) who is small, exquisite, stylish and my oldest friend. There is nothing we don’t share: we’ve known each other since we were 13 and she’s an extra sister to me. Her eyes widened with astonishment as the Jana the diva emerged from the front of the car. Her amazement deepened as it became apparent that Jana, despite being able to produce paperwork to prove that she was a trained paediatric nurse back home in the Czech Republic, had no clue how to bottle feed a baby. And deepened again when she saw, the next day, that Jana’s wedding outfit consisted of a halter neck full length scarlet silk sheath, laced up the back and slashed to the hip. Taking me by the wrist she dragged me to one side ‘Get rid of her!’ she hissed ‘Now!’ and wouldn’t listen to my tearful protestations that I was would be well and truly stuck without someone, anyone, however ineffectual, to help. I was granted a brief stay of execution, but left in no doubt that as far as CG was concerned, Jana’s return ticket was as good as booked.

The final straw came when we went to the wrong church (twice) and Jana laughed. Not only the wrong church actually: the wrong village, too. In the chaos of a move, a new baby, bla bla bla, I had lost the wedding invitation and was relying on a conversation my brother and I had had months earlier when he had first got engaged. When I asked him where he would get married, he mentioned the name of a hamlet just east of Ipswich. When we arrived there, - in pretty good time considering all things - the doubt set in as we soon as we saw the congregation filing into the church.

A curious mixture of flowing hair and clothes, lots of open toed sandals, probably a guitar or two – nothing wrong with any of it just not, we felt, a likely combination at the marriage of a soldier and a forensic psychiatrist. With Jana sniggering in the back, we took a quick trip to the village shop (think League of Gentlemen) and were directed to the only other church for miles around. Our hearts sang as we whipped round corners and took off on bumps to get to it – and sank again as we saw the tight suits and tattoos gathered there.

Chelsea Godmother, in the car behind, had intentionally left her invitation in her room, not unreasonably under the impression that the groom’s sister might know what was going on. So our little convoy, complete with a giggling Czech, screeched through the Suffolk lanes back to the hotel, retrieved said invitation and shot off again in the opposite direction to the right wedding at the right church in the right village.

Did I mention I was doing the first reading? As he raced to park, Eeyore pushed me from the still moving car and I burst through the door into the dark and quiet – puce, red eyed and rippling. Every head in the building turned towards me, and in the distance I saw the relief in my family’s eyes: my parents that I wasn’t in a ditch somewhere; my sister that she wasn’t going to have to stand up in my place and read something she’d never seen before.

The Best Man gesticulated that I should sit right at the front and I walked down the longest aisle in the kingdom, dying gently with every step, and sank into the pew just in time to see my drop dead gorgeous brother and his breathtaking bride emerge from signing the register. I’d missed it. The whole important bit. But never mind, here they were, coming towards me smiling gently, coming to talk to me, me, the fat raddled sister, me first of all in their married life, - too right. ‘MOVE’ hissed my brother, through his grimace. ‘MOVE!. We’re sitting there.’ He’s big – you don’t argue with him. Scarlet anew I moved two pews back and sat on my fifteen year old niece.

The reading went well though. Only two distractions: Jana, smirking, sashaying in with Geordie in her arms and every man in the building moving over to squeeze her in; and a moment when I thought there was a dead toddler on the pew in front of the lecturn. Of course not: a younger guest, fresh off the plane from South Africa, dealing with a little jet lag.

It took the intervention of an age-old friend of my parents, however, to make me finally see the light. Very kindly she took me behind the portaloos during the reception and said that no woman in her right mind would have a siren such as ours in the same house as a husband, let alone .... and she let her gaze slide slowly over me, first down then up, in silence. ‘Fine’ I thought. She did have a point - and I resolved that whatever the repercussions, Jana would go when we got home. Assuming we got her that far of course: she seemed to have disappeared, leaving Nos1 and 2 and a swathe of concerned wives behind her. So I left Geordie wrapped in a cafe au lait cashmere pashmina in the arms of his sister’s adoring Chelsea Godmother and danced reels all night at my brother’s wedding.

Tomorrow was undoubtedly another crisis waiting to happen, but for now I had all I wanted. Three beautiful children, a tall dark and handsome husband, friends and family all around me. (Ah - and no help.)