We are preparing for a very important visitor to our home this weekend (all visitors to our home are very important). Lara is coming to stay and we have a PaD dinner party tomorrow night to celebrate. She’s in Europe with her family and has taken a short break to spend a couple of days with us. We hope to reciprocate the wonderful hospitality shown to us in March in NYC by her and her lovely Mum......as well as the rest of the gang.

I had a quick look around our guest bedroom last night and my heart sank at the tatty state of the bedding so I popped into that bastion of Britishness, Marks and Spencer to buy some new stuff so she doesn’t have to sleep in the tatty stuff. This is it – all ready for her. It doesn’t go with the room because it is not green but fashions change in bedding as fast as they do these days in clothes and clearly green just isn’t fashionable at the moment. Ah well, this will have to do. At least it meets with my other main bedding criteria – darkish colour and a random pattern so if we slip up and leave the bedroom door open then dog paw prints won’t show!!!!!

As I climbed out of the car I realised I am a walking ad for M&S (whose Christmas slogan this year has been magic and sparkle by the way) – M&S cardi, M&S blouse, M&S trousers, M&S bra, M&S knickers, M&S socks, in fact the only things I am wearing that are not from M&S are my boots and they are from Clarks so now you can see what a fuddy duddy I am.

It’s partly that I hate shopping (as I’ve said before) and partly that it’s just too convenient – it’s at the bottom of the road and stays open until 10pm each night. That means that if I need to buy something I can pop in on a Monday night at 7pm, it’s empty and I have the place to myself. So probably 70-80% of my clothes come from there and I don’t care how much of a fuddy duddy it makes me. The company has been in trouble of late with falling profits and changes in management – I can see why when their clothes are cut badly and never fit quite right any more……but I still buy from them to meet my other needs.

The bed in this photo is a long-held dream bit of furniture for me – I had hankered after a sleigh bed for so long I can’t remember when I didn’t. I saved up all my dosh and bought this beautiful piece of furniture, solid French Cherry wood and exquisitely made. Why then is it in the spare room? Because it’s unmoveable without a special tool from the manufacturer and I don’t have the tool so when DM and I decided to sleep at the back of our house, rather than the front, we had to buy a new bed….gggrrrrr.

Lara’s visit is so exciting – I can’t wait to see her tomorrow. There is so much to talk about and so much to do to show her a bit of our world after she so graciously and generously shared her world with us in the Spring.

This time last year I took one of my most successful photos ever on PBASE in terms of hits - it is kind of nice, but I suspect that's not the reason why it's so popular!!!