This is one of my precious baby’s toys. It’s funny really, although the toys are non-dog-specific, sooner or later they all become ‘Rosie’s toy’. Archie’s interest in them is very short-lived though he does play with them to start off with. They just end up gravitating towards Rosie somehow.

I can’t even remember this one’s origins – it may have been one of the dog toys left here by the previous owner of the house I suppose as there were a few. It’s actually quite a nice little football but it has been punctured somehow and it sums up the mood of the Mingay-Alstead world very effectively. It landed next to me on the sofa as a ‘gift’ from Rosie along with a couple of other equally chewed and flawed toys. Both dogs have been clinging to my side, sensing my mood and trying to help me along.

We’ve had another extremely tough day of the ‘be careful what you wish for’ kind. I read a book this week on the train of that title and enjoyed it thoroughly even though its plot was sort of similar though less extreme to ‘Bedazzled’ – that film with wotserface who lived with old floppy fringe until he was caught out with a hooker in LA – you know the one! Anyway, ‘be careful what you wish for’ isn’t at all like that in as much as it’s much more ordinary – a girl gets accosted by a gypsy with lucky heather, feels obliged to buy it then things all start going her way….until she realises they weren’t what she wanted after all.

We’ve been caught up in a ‘be careful what you wish for’ world of late and today we’ve been fighting against seemingly insurmountable problem after problem, culminating tonight with ‘the final straw’ – not in itself a huge trauma but just the very last thing in a day full of ‘things’. Our garage doors, which we knew were rotten and we knew their hinges were completely knackered, fell off while we were trying to secure them for the night. I ended up sat in the car with the reversing lights on so DM could see while he valiantly struggled with two unwieldy and very detached lumps of wood, trying to find a way of securing them.

In order to stave off the utter gloom of the day we’ve been engaged in a self-bolstering exercise of ‘do you hate waking up to that view every morning? ‘no!’, ‘do you hate waiting for sheep and ponies to cross the road before you can be on your way?’ ‘no!’, ‘do you hate being able to exercise Rosie and Archie in our own field?’ ‘no!’, ‘do you hate not having boy racers charging up and down the street in their blinged-up Ford Fiestas and Vauxhall Novas?’ ‘no!’……etc etc

Then we think ‘have we done the right thing?’ – oh how we hope so! ‘Will it be alright?’ – oh how we hope so! ‘Will we make it out of the other side of this quagmire?’ – oh how we hope so!

All we have to do is stop ourselves from wishing we didn’t have to spit into a bucket every time we clean our teeth, stop feeling as though every day is like wading through treacle……but as they say, be careful what you wish for…

Last year, I was on my first day of 'the purple wig' oh how it's not the same without Jeanne around....