My day today has been vile. It’s been painted black with the heavy burden of anger all day.

It started with two round trips of 14 miles in the car – the first one to buy supplies of paint and the second to change all of the paint I’d bought because in my hurry, I’d picked up the wrong stuff first time around.

Then I went to see a very nice girl, who DM and I (me particularly) have let down big time. She spent two hours chewing my ear off and to be honest, although I could not have predicted the difficulties she’s had, or even done anything to remedy her problem more quickly than we did, I deserved it. I am utterly despondent because she’s the last person on the planet who I’d have wanted to ‘do wrong by’ and in fact, all I did that was ‘wrong’ was to be kind to someone else who has effectively shafted me and in shafting me, she’s shafted her too. That’ll teach me to try to be nice – from now on I’m just going to be a nasty old bitch then no-one will expect anything other than mean-ness from me and at least I’ll be living up to my reputation.

Then home to paint the sitting room – for the second time in two months. You see, the first time around we chose a paint colour that we’d had in the little cottage and loved because it glowed like buttermilk. Unfortunately here, perhaps because we chose a silk finish and perhaps because we have a room here that faces North and reflecting into the room is nothing but green, the colour looked horrible. I hated it. I pretended not to because I was worried about upsetting DM. He hated it and pretended not to because he was worried about upsetting me. I ‘fessed up’ and he was relieved so we decided to do it again.

So, given that the room is our sitting room, I decided that I had to get the job done and finished in a day so we faced less disruption and we could then use the fire tonight, sit down and watch the telly in comfort. That meant (because I am totally anal about paint coverage) three coats of paint, culminating at 9pm, when I put down the brush and ‘job done’.

Thinking ahead, in between coats, I’d dug some potatoes from the garden and washed them to go with a pie I’d made a couple of months ago that I’d got out of the freezer to defrost before going into the oven, which I did when I’d finished the painting. Pie in oven, potatoes in pan on stove, easy peasy. Because the meal required nothing more in terms of physical activity from me, it gave me the opportunity to go upstairs and have a bath after a day of gruelling hard work.

When I came down, David was sorting out the room, ready for us to sit down for what was left of the evening. He asked me to help him carry a bit of furniture, which I declined to do (heavy cabinet, no shoes, danger of broken glass still lurking in corner from breaking a light bulb there earlier in the day). He got angry, not really because of the furniture but because of the time of night I'd stopped work and the fact that I'd promised him I would slow down. I got angry that he was angry, we ended up yelling at each other and to be honest I felt as though I’d had quite enough of that for one day, given what I’d had earlier.

So, I’ve spent the day working like a dog, trying my best to cause minimal disruption and getting things finished quickly but despite my efforts, the day has been vile. I wish I’d never got out of bed. All I have got for my efforts is bloody misery and such utter physical tiredness that I’m not sure which way is up. Now I've painted a picture that's as black as black can be.

Last year, I was in a posh place.