First thing this morning, I was unloading the dishwasher and I remembered that I’d popped the marbles that I found in the veggie garden’s supreme rubbish tip into the dishwasher to clean the grime off them.

There were layers of it – some kind of oil from the lamp they were originally a part of, mud, ice, food colouring and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, a layer of porridge and flour glue…….the latter two components finding their way onto the surface of the glass from the marbles being chucked into the sink by DM and me then chucking porridge remains and bread flour down behind them, not realising they were there.

So, they came out of the dishwasher this morning and I looked for a receptacle to put them in so they didn’t roll around on the side in the kitchen forever. This stainless steel bowl came to hand and I thought to myself ‘I dunno, I know between me and ‘im we’ve done these to death but I still think there is a great shot here’ so I took them into the studio and shot the pic before starting work! Pretty cool. That is as rare an event as the sighting of a hen’s tooth.

Then came an eleven hour day of setback after setback….DM thinks all I need to do is ‘buy the girl some flowers’ before I get to star in my own little Squeeze number….shame it’s one about an alcoholic gambling bloke whose marriage fails because he’s never home…..

I suppose you could quite easily say I’ve lost my marbles, not Mad Maureen, having agreed as I did, to going back to a contracted four-day week this year (well, I was doing more than that anyway, I may as well be recognised at least for some of it). My hopes and aspirations for my idee fixe, the grand plan, are dashed once again and I’ve been put back into the box I am coming to see I deserve, back with my nose on the grindstone and an ever-diminishing amount of time to breathe life into the grand plan. I could even say a limited amount of time to breathe.

Perhaps tomorrow…….it is, after all, another day.

We had the pleasure of Mike's company last year.....hope he comes again soon.