For the last few months, it has seemed as though everything I have touched has crumbled to dust. All my efforts, no matter how Herculean, to get the rat’s nest in some sort of order for Christmas have failed spectacularly – even though I have taken three weeks holiday to work on the house and worked early mornings, evenings and weekends too. What gets my goat most about it is that the failure isn’t for want of trying on my part, it’s being let down by other people, big time. First spanner in the works was the builders starting, so finishing, way behind schedule and therefore not leaving enough time for the post-building works to be done.

Next the windows. Given that we are probably the best customer of the window fitter that he’s had in some time, I am distinctly unimpressed that the two windows on the front of the house are still not watertight despite being assured that this is certainly part of the service and it’s never happened before. I can’t get on with my work, until we are sure the windows are watertight. The trouble is when he comes to ‘fix’ them, we can’t see immediate results because we have to wait for rain and then see what happens. When we realise it's still not sealed, we wait again for another appointment and then go through the process over again. It’s incredibly frustrating.

My ‘night job’ of photography has also seen one or two spectacular disappointments in recent weeks, which I’m not about to go into here – too painful and too miserable for words.

As for my day job – well, let’s just say that no matter how hard I work, it’s never enough and no matter how much I try, that too goes completely unseen and unnoticed.

So, I am feeling beleaguered and battered.

The one little ‘victory’ I can claim is that this lot – six and a half bags of flour, they weigh 14lbs or a stone. It’s a stone that I no longer have to carry around with me each day and having put these bags into carrier bags and carted them over to the studio with me for this shot, I can tell you that I am extremely glad about that.

I’ve been losing weight for about three months, not by a strict diet, but just by cutting fat out of my diet as much as possible so getting down to 30-40 grams of fat a day. It’s not been a quick loss but it’s been more-or-less steady and today I have passed a milestone by taking off a full stone, which was my ambition to achieve before Christmas. Who knows, by then I may get another couple of pounds off.

I needed to do this and am glad I did. It’s one small victory in battle for me in a war that I’m losing hand over fist.

Last year, a glorious sunrise - not that we've seen too many of those this year.