Happy Friday!

This week's edited lows... (and there have been highlights too, of course, but we all know they make for much less entertaining reading);

1. A bucket full of rain poured directly on my head every time I stepped out of the front door. Luckily, I recently invested in a cherry-red coat with a hood which arrived on Monday so this was less of a problem than it might have been. Although...

2. ...when it arrived it became clear that the coat was not actually cherry-red but belisha beacon orange. I look like a traffic cone (only without the fetching reflective stripe). Hmm. Not quite the style statement I had intended...

3. Losing our cleaner who has had the temerity to go and get herself a full time job. I mean, of course I'm happy for her, really I am, but - not to go on about it - it's VERY inconvenient...

4. Our previously reliable but now a bloody pain in the arse car has conked out, sadly without the Ferrari sound effects this time, and instead with an extremely off-putting bubbling grating burbling sound coming from the exhaust. Just for fun, there is also an additional off-putting sloshing sound in the door. I diagnosed a faulty exhaust and a perished window seal, and took it straight to the garage where Ray 'I take look tomorrow morning PM you try to drive gently nothing is hanging down from the bottom you did check yes you did check right because that could be dangerous and yes I know you say you check already I am listening PM I know you tell me already you check and I must go now bye see you tomorrow bye' the motor-mouth and punctuationally-challenged mechanic is working on it. He tells me it will be sorted by midday today, but if that's the last we hear from our sulky exhaust, I will eat my sopping wet new hood.

5. After testing our central heating for an hour or so last night our boiler decided to take some time off this morning (perhaps striking in sympathy with those postal workers?) meaning that I had to make yet another 7am phone call to the oh-so-helpful people at British Gas to arrange an emergency appointment. After much pleading they agreed to come this afternoon, and of course when I got back from the school run (which had to be done on foot due to previously mentioned messed-up car), the blasted thing had stopped working to rule and has sorted itself out...

6. Also? I am experiencing the side effects of over-indulging in the French Onion Soup I decided to make to try and reduce the great Veggie-Box Onion Glut of '09 in the fridge. It's the Boys I feel sorriest for on this one, actually.

Not that they ate any of the soup, you understand. They've just had to live with a mother who has...