We’ve had cold, blustery sunshine and showers here today and that means loads of rainbows. They’ve been really vivid and bright.

I still had the lensbaby on the camera so I thought I’d give this a try and see what it’d look like. I really do like it a lot – there is a feeling of movement almost as though the raindrops are whizzing away, leaving the rainbow. Well, it does it for me anyway!

So, we’re peering through our own rainfall and towards our goal and although I’ve been very down these last few days, I am starting to see what we have achieved instead of what we’ve failed to achieve.

I was on a trip to what is rapidly becoming my favourite place on the planet (behind home that is) Trago, this afternoon, buying those bloody curtains that may or may not get hung before Christmas – at least (a) from my list on Wednesday is satisfied now. While I was driving I was thinking about our ‘crock of gold’ – our escape to our little bit of country. The road has been hard, that I won’t deny, nor would I say the worst is over – I am sure we will find lots more pits to fall into and some of them will contain vipers, there is no doubt.

However, we are here. We have had some extraordinary successes – we’ve been eating home grown stuff at every meal since early June and although all that’s left is a few celeriac tubers and a couple of chillis, that’s certainly more than I’d have dared hope for at the start of the year. We now have a home that is in a magical place and that is full of unlimited possibilities. We’re still the best of friends as well as all of the other things we share, even though there have been times when we’ve fought and fought over one thing or another. We’ve got electricity that works properly and we’ll have four rooms there-or-there-abouts done by Christmas. (Assuming the leaking window frames are now properly sealed, which is difficult to tell as we’d expect them to take a few days to dry and they were only done yesterday afternoon.)

I feel a ‘Take That’ moment coming on. I am an unashamed fan of the boys, being the eternal pop girl at heart. I caught the end of their ‘An audience With’ last weekend and wished fervently I’d seen it all but I didn’t dare ask DM for an hour long stint with them…..he was balking at the ten mins I persuaded him into. I keep thinking that one of these days I might treat myself to a DVD of their greatest hits – I can’t remember which one it is (might be Pray) that has the beautiful old cars in the video and lots of semi-naked Take That torsos in the rain but that video is priceless for an old bird like me – bung that on and I can be brought up from the gloom in about 0.3 milliseconds!

Anyway, they did ‘Never Forget’ right at the end and it’s one of my faves. It’s so full of life. So, this is how I feel today and I defy anyone to suggest we’ve been passengers in our own lives – we really have gone and done it. Forged a Grand Plan and gone out and made it real for us. We’re here.

We've come so far and we've reached so high
And we've looked each day and night in the eye
And we're still so young and we hope for more, But remember this
We're not invincible, we're only people

Sorry – cheesy and sentimental I know but it does it for me.

One of my biggest regrets (not that I believe you should ever look back - always keep going forward is my 'motto' in life) in forcing through the grand plan is that I never got to cook on my Rayburn. We got it fitted up and working after we moved out in time for the new residents to enjoy its pleasures.