I can’t honestly say I’ve enjoyed my two weeks holiday, in fact, I’ve spent a lot of it bemoaning the fact that it’s not been much of a holiday. Aside from a little oasis of four days in the lake district, when we were pampered and looked after by Bill, Pat and David, the rest of the time off has been spent clearing rubbish from our garden (two massive skips have been filled and we’ve still not got it all out), prepping our bedroom and the dining room for plastering, working on the new hearth and putting a new ceiling into our lobby.

The lobby ceiling is my fault. I said to DM, after the electricians had been making holes in it, I’d like to make it vaulted with the roof-line, rather than flat as it was before. ‘Come on’ I said, it’s easy and will only take us a day to do…..well, five days of work later, we’ve finally got it done – almost! There are still four little bits of trim needing to go up in order to finally get the last of it done but DM says he will cut them in the garage during the week while I’m at work.

I must say, it looks completely fab, but it’s been a much bigger job and much more complex than we’d realised at the outset. However, it’s done now.

On the positive side, how many people can set up their workmate and jigsaw in such a fantastic location? I’m sure very few indeed. While David popped down the road to get a piece of timber to finish off something where we’d underestimated how much of a particular type we’d need, I was cutting a plank of wood into a complex pattern to trim up the edge of our work. It needed notching in several different ways and a long ‘tongue’ down one edge.

I was nearly finished when I thought of this as my pic for today – a self-portrait of me with a power tool. I do love my power tools and have used a mitre saw, a circular saw, a jigsaw and a drill today – I reckon that makes me pretty useful around the house. I’d like to think that David would agree. When he returned, the only cut still needing to be made to this piece was an angled cut along one edge with the circular saw.

Back to work now with the small consolation that I won’t have to do these jobs in the evenings or at weekends, though there will be plenty of others waiting for me over the coming weeks.

Last year, we were walking on the moor in gorgeous sunshine.