Sunday

Last week was very odd, I was on a bit of a downer - work was difficult, it was cold, wet, dreary, depressing and miserable. I achieved almost nothing and had to tackle difficult professional and personal issues every day. On Friday night, I went home - a bit pissed off, walked the dogs and sat in front of the computer watching old TV shows on iPlayer, forgot to eat my dinner so had a piece of cheese instead, and drank 6 cans of Carlsberg.

On Saturday morning, I felt much better. In fact, I had a great day - achieved loads, cleaned the house, managed to make work progress and even arranged for 60KG of dog food to be delivered - enough to last until next year. I even went out for a drink with a friend in the evening and had a nice time in a pub with a real fire. Today, I'm feeling very much the same - having already had a long dog walk and on a fresh pot of coffee. So, alcohol can be good for something. I didn't even have a hangover!

Lots to do this week - I'm back in the dental hospital in London on Tuesday. I'm also being much more positive and I'm tackling some fairly serious work issues head on tomorrow - I'll let you know how I get on, a bit of a 'grasp the nettle' approach.

I'm taking some stuff to the salvation army shop later - for some reason they didn't open yesterday - by the time the evening arrived so much stuff had been dumped outside that it would have been impossible to get into the shop - it was piled 6 feet high outside like an avalanche of old clothes and worn socks.

I experimented yesterday with the 'heat your room with 4 tea lights and 2 flowerpots' method - I don't really think it's worth bothering with - apparently it's good in greenhouses.

I had a walk around the garden centre yesterday - picked up a couple of decent cordelines for about £2 each - simply because the plastic pots were cracked. Have already planted them out - trimmed some branches from the trees and did a general garden clear up - I'm actually there' with the garden now - all I need to do is finish the last bit of terracing, sort out a path and buy a load of pea shingle - and let it grow. With the exception of the cherry tree, it's all hardy evergreens and almost everything is architectural - so I can just let it mature.

Still not fixed the kitchen lights, but it's quite dark today - might give it a miss. I cleaned the house from top to bottom yesterday - despite the dogs not being allowed upstairs - there were still great drifts of dog hair under the bed.

Still no news on the identity of the murdered woman, from the description and the fact that she had lived there for 10 months and was found with two carrier bags of larger - I have this dreadful feeling it might be the drunk woman who lived a few doors away. That house is now almost fully refurbished and looks lovely - they even put very sympathetic new windows in.  The last 2 houses behind me that hadn't changed hands this year have now sold. The house prices on the street behind mine range from 200-400k - the house on the end of my road is on the market at 120k but will probably achieve 80k - it's falling down. Literally. I'm in the cold part of a hot spot.