We’ve got a very exciting event happening tomorrow – my Mum and Dad are coming to stay for a few days. I am so excited….even though I look around and think ‘they’ll think we’re stark staring bonkers’ for buying this complete dump of a house.

I daresay when they’ve seen the bath (thankfully white but unfortunately now tide-marked with green gloop from when I hennaed my hair last week, which I can’t get off) and the bucket to spit your toothpaste in, they’ll wonder why they came.

There is a strong possibility that when they see what’s growing on the walls of the room they’re sleeping in they will never come here again. (That’s if they ever can climb over the mountain of boxes to get into it). Equally I’m sure that when they see what we’re laughingly calling our studio they will realise that no sane human being would come here to be photographed. I’m sure our resident rats (and we seem to have a whole family of them) will welcome them happily – especially if they leave anything around that could be eaten. The doors that won’t open, the doors that won’t close, the weird plumbing that spews out strange diarrhoea-like stuff all over the bedroom carpet and who knows what other charming ‘countryside’ things will greet them.

There are a small number of things I know.

1. I love DM.
2. He loves me
3. We both love the dogs (even though the dogs are sometimes so scared they won’t leave the bedroom at night)
4. Oddly and I can’t quite fathom why…..we love it here.
5. We must be insane or perverse or possibly both

For now though, cleaning is the name of the game – we have to put up a front of ‘clean-ness’ in the small, forlorn hope they won’t notice the rats so here is a pic of a brillo pad to show we mean it. My lovely friend Becks asked me recently if we missed our old home and I confessed that we did....then I realised she meant Sandhurst, not the cottage...it's the cottage I miss. Our friends and neighbours in our little haven of calm and clean. I don't miss Sandhurst one single jot (OK OK I do miss the bathrooms....)

Last year? I was 'trudging' around the Ivy, Quaglinos and all sorts of posh restaurants in the name of business.