This week...

I have sustained two cooking burns and fallen down the stairs. Falling down the stairs wasn't too bad, maybe a touch undignified, but no serious damage. Until I got out of bed the next morning with what felt like a bruised coccyx (a fine word; I am delighted to use it, although tailbone comes a close second). It would make sense, I thought, since the fall was a sitting one, bumping my bum one step at a time in a rapid progress to the cellar. (I must get the decor sorted out.) Anyway, it put paid to my morning Ramblers, even though I had out my fancy boots and all.

Also out of time, I am behind on my Knicker Drawers. I have a beautiful commission for a lovely young lady and I want to do her proud. Not that I've ever met her, nor likely will, but if I pass her in the street I should like to imagine she is thrilled by the long tendril ties and soft wrapping cover of her book. May it see her through happy college years.

I bought a roof rack to take Tiger's windsurfing gear to our local lake. Stupidly, I have only now begun to consider the consequences of this one.

My washi tape arrived! (So much for the free delivery. It cost me a tenner to get it out the Post Office.)

And of buyer beware... I visited a car boot sale this week, and bought from a lovely gentle elderly man a pair of leather gloves for one pound. Then I discovered they were both left hands.

However. I have been amusing myself with Squirrel's appalling spelling. On the worksheets she submits to the indefatigable tutor, she has hydrogen making a poping sound when it is lit. I like to imagine it also softly incants In spiritu sancto as it goes up in flames.

And I am becoming expert on Brazil. Thanks to the long hours spent talking about how you can present statistics and why Brazilians have 360 holidays every year. (But I would like to add that I am not worth kidnapping by your local drug lord to extract my up-to-the-minute, world-class knowledge because actually I am only half listening to it, chipping in whenever I have a petty whine about why can't I go to Rio? Why can't the children go to Rio, etc. etc.*)

I am in continued negotiation with a local exam centre. They are now at me with demands for character references.

Speaking of the children, on the home ed front, they made it to a (cut-price) ice-skate session. Tiger also enjoyed a workshop at Buckingham Palace, Queen's Collection, on Castiglione. As a non-attendant adult, I had time to enjoy an excellent chin-wag with Mich. She impressed me hugely by knowing the local pubs and taking me to a toilet that looked like a brothel.

But forget the children! They are busy hot-housing themselves with chemistry, geography and Latin. I also had a great time talking with my-twin-sister-separated-at-birth-even-though-we-are-ten-years-apart who told me about her fab start to 2014! It involved not only punching a public servant, but also spending an uber-glamour evening out, sat on a toilet sulking for two hours while listening to the bulimic vomiting going on in the cubicle next door! (I think you can probably see why I get on with her.)

*Worse, I once went to Rio and had dinner with A.S.Byatt. Not that she'll remember. But then I had kids. The end.