Isn’t this supposed to be a key cause of marital disputes? Or is that just an urban myth?

Can you tell it’s nearly half past ten and I am rapidly running out of time and energy today?

I haven’t stopped today – it’s been a working day fraught with problems and on top of that there have been three men here smashing the hell out of the place. I am very glad for my office ‘over the road’. Our men are doing a fine job so far but with the best will in the world, when they’re making holes in walls (some of them rather a lot bigger than intended), they have made quite a lot of mess, especially dust, which we can feel in our throats and on our skin tonight.

As things stand we have a bathroom on the lawn, along with assorted radiators, another bathroom in the garage, minus one or two fairly significant bits and not one in the house at all. We have no hot water either.

It’ll feel like a million years ago when we take our first bath in the new tub or step into the shower but for now, it feels like living in a building site, which we promised ourselves we wouldn’t do for at least a year.

It kind of bothers me that we can’t even keep promises to ourselves if truth be told.

After all this chaos and pandemonium, we’ve had to race across the Tamar after work tonight to buy tiles because, for reasons to tedious to go into now, we’ve been putting off making the decision about what to buy and we have come to ‘crunch day’. We had to get them today, or we would be holding up the builders.

I wanted matt white, he wanted glazed white with dimples and I was fearful we’d never come to agreement and that was a problem as we raced into the shop only fifteen minutes before closing time.

Interestingly, we ended up happily compromised on plain, shiny but not dimpled white – in fact, the cheapest tiles you can buy so that was just fine with me. 'Put in a border' said the builder, so we did – the border cost more than the whole of the rest of the room’s tiles but at least two things can be said about it:

1. We agreed immediately on what border to have, no disputes at all.

2. It is going to suit the new/old Victorian style bathroom in our genuine Victorian home perfectly.

We got home from this dash across the border at nearly nine o’clock and by the time we’d cooked, eaten, watered (yeah yeah yeah – that’s one of the big benefits of living in the clouds, we’ve got plenty of water), cleaned out wabbit and tidied up the kitchen it was nearly half-ten and that’s the nub of the matter.

It’s half-ten (well, nearly 11pm now) and I definitely feel squeezed at the wrong end. Do I have a ring of confidence? No. Have I stayed fresh for 12 hours? No. I feel decidedly grumpy and tired. Why is the shot B&W when I'm a self-professed full-on colour girl? Well, to tell you the truth, it had too much of this one about it when it was still in colour!

Last year it was hot too!