I have been slogging all day – I’ve painted a ceiling (twice), painted another ceiling (once), painted the walls of a room (once) and painted two doors. I’ve thrown a pot of paint all down my left side, the floor and assorted dogs.

While I have been doing this DM has done the tiling of the hearth and done some filling on the two doors I’d painted earlier, which, when varnished with a dark colour, didn’t show the holes where some nutter had in the past hard-boarded over the wooden panels. Someone later removed the hardboard but didn’t bother to fill the holes where the panel pins held the hardboard to the door. So, we’ve just done that.

Will there be dry plaster in our bedroom tomorrow? I don’t know – I do have a contingency plan if there isn’t. (Final coat of paint on bathroom ceiling, coat of satinwood on new wooden ceiling of porch, final coat of paint on walls in porch.)

In between times, I’m trying to finish the pics for my calendar and to be honest have run out of steam – this paneer has been waiting to be photographed since I made it on Thursday. DM says ‘it could be anything’ and indeed it is totally out of context but there is an ‘in-context’ version on my calendar gallery – I can’t decide. I can’t even say if either is worthy of making the cut.

We’re both extremely tired – I have fallen asleep on the sofa twice this week, a virtually unheard-of experience and DM can match me on that. I’m vacillating between thrill at having achieved a whole lot of stuff today, misery at how much more needs to be done, irritation that the weather is resolutely damp so the plaster is taking forever to dry and gloom that my calendar pics aren’t good enough – crisis of confidence big time. I think it’s tiredness causing inability to think straight.

Ah well, at least I will be feasting tonight (paneer is traditional feast food according to wikipedia) on my home-made cheese, in a traditional matter paneer and served with rice.

Last year, I was rescued from a blizzard by Champ - our friend who was injured in a hit and run a few weeks ago. For anyone who is interested, he's out of hospital and on the mend - hurrah.