Monday

I'm working at home today - I have quite a bit to do and I need to use the phone a lot, so I'm set up here rather than the studio.

I've already had to turn off Radio 4 - Women's hour was driving me mad - and it sees early morning Radio 3 is a bit too 'upbeat' for my tastes.

The Brexit thing was inevitable, sadly. It will almost certainly provoke another Scottish dash for freedom. Much of the language being used is quite stupid and offensive, people talking about sovereignty without actually knowing what it means. The big names who want an exit are doing it for themselves, and not for 'us' or the country. It is galling to be on the same side as Cameron - but we can't leave Europe. It will be a disaster. Hopefully it will reveal the utter selfishness of the far right - and it's clearly going to split the Conservatives down the middle. It's already the death of Cameron - he said he was going to leave anyway and Johnson is in the long game for his job. That fills me with horror.

I couldn't watch more than half an hour of 'The Night Manager' - it just didn't work for me. It had none of the honesty or realism of a Smiley story - it was too fake and glossy and implausible. It's quite hard for anything to hold my attention anyway and this just didn't work.

I've seen some photographs of the restaurant I gave advice to on their interiors and actually - it all looks pretty good. I'm looking forward to a visit. I submitted my objections to the planning committee about the building next door to my studio - hopefully that all made sense - I spent a lot of time trying to correlate to the actual specific categories. It was harder than I thought. The people running the ground floor bar next door are also are leaving their tenure this weekend - it will be a shame to see them go, they did a fantastic job of bringing the building back to life. I can't see anyone else making it work.

It's not actually cold now - just very wet and windy - it has been for months. My garden is still waterlogged and has been since last year. Yesterday I watched some youtube films about putting up concrete fence posts. I'm going to have to save money and do it all myself, once the weather changes. I also need to shore up the bay tree, again!