I seem to have been whirling around in a blur of stress and busy-ness these past few days.

It's been busy thanks to the usual mix of work and chores and life in general, and also because we've had my parents staying with us for the past few days - they just left this morning.

As for the stress - some of it has been to do with money (or the lack thereof). We are paying the mortgage on top of our rent and we really can't afford it. And some has been to do with Stephen. He is miserable (we think) and acting out in a myriad of difficult-to-deal-with ways.

But, the financial stress will lift in April, when we are shot of this damn rental house, and I have been speaking to various people at Stephen's college (one advantage of working in your child's place of education) and I think that things should improve for him, so there may be some light at the end of that tunnel.

Things are also looking hopeful on the house front. The new bedroom carpets are going in on the 1st of February, so - given that we can rent a van - we will be able to move on the weekend of the 3rd/4th. I simply cannot wait. The weather has finally gone wintery (it snowed here this morning) and this house is revolting in the cold. This morning my breath was hanging in white clouds as I was getting dressed in our arctic attic bedroom.

The picture comes from this weekend. We walked through the park to the allotments - patches of land which people rent from the council to grow veggies. Too much of a mission for us, to have to go out in order to work in the garden - but once we move (our perennial cry) we are looking forward to starting our own little vegetable patch. I think that the bathtub in the picture must have something to do with the ban on hosepipes which - believe it or not, since we've had above-average rainfall for the past several months - has only just been lifted. Crazy, that a country where it never stops raining can't figure out a way to conserve some of that water.