Today was much more like a normal day;

I woke up with the alarm clock (no wonder it was noisy in bed), had breakfast, did some work on the computer and apart from the guy who came to pick up some parcels, that was about that for the morning.

But I'm glad all of the parcels have gone as I now have a little space. And just as well too because I had a text message - my door is ready. Rosemarie has very kindly said that she will keep it for me but I still need to pick it up, and that means emptying Caliburn of all the stuff I bought at IKEA at Christmas - hence it's just as well that I have the space.

What I actually bought at IKEA was a trolley load of bits and pieces for €10. I always pick those up if I can, especially the lot that I have in the van because firstly there is a load of side panels for wardrobes, cupboards and the like with all of the holes pre-drilled in them for shelves and drawers and so on. Very useful, these, and I have plans for them. Secondly there is a pile of sprung bed laths that I need, and thirdly of course, a pile of sides and doors from display furniture. You xan make nice shelves in the shed with those.

Yes, it's always a good plan to buy a load of that stuff when you see it.

I've done a pile of weeding along the pathways too and it's much easier to move about now. It's really only scratching the surface of course but it's all progress anyway.

And while we are on the subject of weeding, I noticed that the potato beds were looking overgrown and so I spend an hour on them pulling up the rubbish. And you'll be amazed how different all of that looks now. The biggest advantage of raised beds is that the soil has not been compacted because you don't walk upon it - in fact the thorough hoeing and raking that it had before I went away coupled with all of the wet weather means that even the biggest and toughest weed can be pulled out easily by hand without any problem whatever.

From there I went on to pull the old caravan window off the plot in which I had sown some beetroot. You couldn't see anything in there apart from a mass of weeds but once I had pulled a pile of rubbish out, there were in fact quite a few beetroot sitting in there doing what beetroot do. But that has confirmed something - quite a few seeds that I planted, like the beetroot and the brassica, I covered over with some kind of glass covering, and they have taken well. Other stuff that I planted and didn't cover, they haven't done so well. There must be a moral in that.

In other news, I've been quietly seething about the Royal Bank of Scotland. I sent some instructions to them ages ago to do something and they replied with a whole host of reasons why they should not do it. This afternoon I made up my mind that I really ought to take some drastic action, involving pick-axe andles and napalm, but even as I was speaking to myself the phone rang - and it was THEM!

Talk about timing!

And I didn't have my steam meal tonight - we had footy instead and I need a free evening to start with that.