459.
The fencer called this morning - a whole week earlier than expected - to build a fence separating our garden from the driveway. He did some work for our neighbour, and he did a good job, so I decided to give him a go with a little bit of work to see how he did, and to evaluate him for more work in the near future. Like nearly all self-employed workmen, the fencer (Craig), is able to do many things that involve copious amounts of digging and heavy manual labour. He served his time working with his father, who is a landscape gardener, before joining a large fencing and drainage contractor, where he worked for several years before deciding to work for himself. Down to earth, funny and hard-working, he did an excellent job for very little money... so I have decided to hire him again to prepare the ground for the driveway. This work involves moving about 200 cubic feet of soil from one part of the garden to another, knocking down a wall and clearing away about 50 ft sq of vegetation and dumping it. He said he can start next Monday, which is good enough for me. Liam has gone over to the dark side: this evening he went with his friend, Michael, and Michael's dad to the golf driving range... and he liked it! Let's hope it is just a phase! To carry on a new tradition, here is my prediction for Celtic's season: we will win the Champions' League by beating Chelsea 6-0 (we will dispose of Real Madrid in the semis by 3-0 - Nakamura hat-trick); we will win the SPL by 50 clear points; we will beat R*****s 8-1 in the Scottish Cup final and Motherwell 5-0 in the League Cup final. To top the season off, we will be invited to join the English Premiership, but will turn it down in favour of La Liga, and a Russian billionaire will buy the club at Christmas, and give Strachan £500m to spend during the January transfer window. Either that or we will fail to qualify for Europe, come third in the league and get knocked out of both domestic cup competitions before the quarter-finals. The manager will be sacked before Christmas and there will be no money for new players in January. I wonder which it will be!!

I got all of my predictions wrong last year!