When my sister and I were younger we used to laugh at our mum for claiming she had had such a busy day she hadn’t even had time to go to the toilet. That’s been me the past few weeks and let me tell you it is quite uncomfortable! I bet you all thought I had disappeared into therapy after my previous traumatic post.

The past two weeks have been a complete blur of activity. Mostly pleasant and taking advantage of the glorious autumn (forest walks, farm visits, Chester zoo, visitors, soft play and I’ve even visited the allotment!), some less so (M had her booster jabs; C went to Edinburgh and back in a day for a funeral) and my evenings have included an unseemly amount of actual paid work. Can’t turn it down; can’t find time to do it (before 10 pm). (Look! I made this!) I don’t help myself by insisting on proper home-made soups and stews for lunch and so on: just pile on that to-do list.

I’m here now! Today I find myself at a loose end. Just some household tasks, and a friend coming for dinner, and some cards to buy (oh, and two large manuscripts and a website to work on – but I don’t work during daylight hours). I intended whizzing to the allotment as soon as T showed signs of sleepiness but it is so grey and gloomy (and cold) out there that I can’t find much enthusiasm. I am a fair-weather allotmenteer and not ashamed to admit it. Perhaps I should curl up with seed catalogues; it’s that or the ironing.

A weekend of ups and downs to say the least. Friday was the traditional bank-holiday trip to Homebase for some wood (woo) – we now have a shelf up above the shiny new fridge. I got 2 rows of potatoes planted on Saturday: gorgeous out in the sunshine and a friendly robin kept perching stereotypically on my fork handle. Yesterday was really lovely: the sun shone, I turned my compost (a bit smelly as it’s rather too “green” not enough “brown”, and I honestly didn’t realise before I started that next door had guests – hope it wasn’t too stinky for them) while Cameron and Maggie made a lovely lemon yogurt cake, then we all spent the afternoon in the garden with the papers, tea and cake: M watered all the plants and next-door has got some very small and sweet puppies who peeped through the hedge at us.

Today has contained more downs. We had a very unusual lie-in, which the fortunes punished by means of a completely out of control screaming child. I am still at a loss to know what it was all about, but not a pleasant experience and frankly I’d rather have got up at 8 and had a little more emotional balance to my day. She’s been out of sorts all day (and regressing potty-wise too; I do hope she’s not getting ill again), to the extent that she lay down on the floor and refused to move in the middle of the garden centre, where she had been playing perfectly happily just the minute before. Oh, such joy. Cameron flies to Germany this evening and can’t get away soon enough.

I obviously told my Japanese agency that I would be returning to work after Easter as I logged on this morning to find a manuscript awaiting me – despite not having re-contacted them since T was born. I’m going to give it a try and see how I get on (they know how to flatter, telling me it was from one of my regular authors and suggesting I have been missed).