We have had a crushing disappointment today - after the excitement of yesterday's conversation with the store we'd ordered our bed from proclaiming we could have the mattress today, they rang this morning to deliver a blow that only someone who has spent much of the last week sleeping on a kiddie put-you-up can appreciate......our bed hadn't arrived after all and so we were faced with at least another week on the floor, maybe longer. The place where we ordered the bed had long delivery times and our mistake was to not shop around.

I felt like crying as I came off the phone just because I ache so much from having nothing to sleep on. How I longed just to be able to sink down into a nice, soft bed with freshly laundered sheets and sleep. This feeling has been exacerbated by two nights with only five and a half hours sleep - DM, his sister, Linda, Tony and I have been up till 1.30am both nights they were here and the boys (bless 'em) have been up before 7am in the morning. In a cottage this size it's not possible to sleep on when two small boys are determined to play! Sleep depravation is a miserable experience and one I rarely suffer from.

After waving off the family for their onwards journey to their holiday, we took the dogs walking on the moor. Despite continuing storms and rain here in the UK - a road in Scotland has been washed away by a mudslide today, we have had plenty of sunshine here and we wanted to make the most of it. But our conversation was almost exclusively about how miserable we both felt about the lack of a bed.

It occurred to me that we'd have been better off shopping around because I'd remembered seeing a store in Launceston (a small but very pretty market town about ten miles north of here) advertising that they had beds in stock for immediate delivery. I mentioned this to DM because we do need to buy another bed for our spare room and we hit on a plan. Let's go and buy the 'spare room bed' from the place with immediate delivery and use it for ourselves! Eureka!

A quick trip in the car, a short discussion with a wonderfully helpful man in the store and it's being delivered tomorrow - that's just about the best news I can imagine.....I can spend my birthday night sleeping on a comfy bed and it's the first time I can say that in a while.

This photo is of the Town Hall in Launceston, where we whiled away an hour after buying the bed. It's such a pretty, unspoiled place. One of the best things about Cornwall is that the traditional town centre still exists here. There are many towns that DON'T have a Macdonalds or any of the 'designer' names that clutter up the high streets of the rest of the country, leaving most towns bereft of heart or soul. Here we have butcher's shops, bakers, greengrocers and not a Next or Gap anywhere to be seen. Hurrah for that I say.