Because there has been so much going on in our lives of late, I’ve not even mentioned that we’ve got three lots of builders in at the moment – one lot doing windows, one doing the work needed for our new fireplace and the other doing wiring. It’s driving me nuts and I’ve not even been here for half the time they have. Poor DM’s asthma has been badly exacerbated by all the dust, as well as the fact he’s been run ragged by the usual requests for ‘what do you want done here?’ and ‘do you want an x or a y in this situation?’ He has been making rounds of tea for seven!

Eagle-eyed viewers of this photo will notice that the tile-on-a-roll has actually been put on over real tiles – how strange is that? Anyway, who cares – the whole lot will be gone in the not-too-distant future. You may also notice that this granite wall is so hard that the electrician couldn’t get masonry pins in to hold the cable clips – he’s had to drill, plug and screw them to the wall!

Anyway, this is all part of the sudden flurry of activity associated with my windfall of a few weeks back and we decided that we’d both prefer a lot of quick pain then back to normal rather than having builders here constantly for months. So, this shot kind of encapsulates the situation – an overworked single socket on the old wiring system is being replaced by a double on the new system and there is a TV cable going in there too.

The real point I want to make with this shot is the reason why I love being here. The electrician is Becky’s brother. One of his team is the brother of the best man at last weekend’s wedding. The other one of his team has a brother who dated our local pub’s landlady for eight years. She in turn is the sister of the girl who moved into our old house. The window chap’s sister is a friend of one of the electricians and they all know the fireplace man. The plumber we used to do the new bathroom was a friend of our neighbour from our old house, as well as a friend of Christine and his son is a close friend of the brother of the landlady of the pub and therefore also the girl who moved into our old house.

Everybody is connected and now we are getting connected too. We are connected because they are our new friends and because we’re interacting in a real community. I have never experienced such a fantastic thing before in my life. I love it.

Last year, my sense of smell was driving nostalgic memories for me.