We’re away on a long journey today – despite last week’s events and coming to the end of a long and hard road, I’ve had to pick myself up, dust myself down and go on another crusade. Why? Because I’m one of those stoooooooped people that when I get hit, I get back up again and say “c’mon – hit me again, you know you want to”. I just won’t stop fighting. When my colleague and I were summoned to “show our wares” – for the fourth time….and the last three occasions were all cancelled at the eleventh hour, we just had to go and do it. The stakes were too high not to.

So, DM decided he couldn’t risk letting me go alone on the journey of four hundred miles each way for me to get resoundingly battered down in the middle – I am, of course, the world’s greatest masochist. He cooked up a plan, decided to drive me up, take the dogs, see Claz en-route and then accompany me as far as an hotel a couple of miles away from the scene of what will surely be the final bitter blow in this debacle – the metaphoric head on the railings (my head, their railings) as they humiliate us to the end.

The cans of dog food? Well, they were turfed out of the car to give space for R&A in the back and while they were waiting on the doorstep to be brought inside, they got rained on and I thought it made a nice pattern.

So, in the great “Linda stylee” of crowbar-ing her picture as a metaphor for her day, today I have had to can my feelings, my anger, my misery and my fear in the tiny, vain hope that this eight hundred mile round trip will bring joy……

Will it happen? Who knows what tomorrow will bring (except of course I do because I’m writing this several days after the event).

Last year, I was thrilled by a secret. A secret about a new love that was flourishing in the hearts of two dear friends. The sad thing is that the love seems to have floundered although I am certain that they were "made for each other" so I refuse steadfastly to believe it's over. I am waiting for the news that they are back together - even though they both think it's quite dead.