Some days are notable for their clarity, everything goes to plan and it all works as intended.

Today has not been one of those days. To cut a long story short its been a day where lots of effort seems to have been wasted and not much achieved.

We currently have a 'guest dog' - an old and very well behaved but not well bitch belonging to a neighbour who had to go into hospital yesterday. Old dogs are set in their ways and this one is no exception, so that's been fun, as well as dodging in and out of the Dreich 5 weather.

She Who Shall Be Obeyed has managed to contract bronchitis, and so is on stiff antibiotics and miscellaneous inhalants, decongestants and so on. My fault of course because 'twas I who managed to catch the first cold for years immediately after having the anti-caledonian flu injection. Unfortunately it didn't protect me against the inevitable variant produced in the immediate locality and faithfully spread by every snivelling schoolchild.

So, having struggled through a morning which included trying to convince a collection of particularly dim oiks in a certain company who shall remain nameless that their computer system has now successfully lost two standing orders paid to them, I sought temporary respite in what I thought would be a short shopping trip to the local town. I did not plan for the 30 mile diversion to meet my daughter from the Glasgow train, but hey nonny, what's a couple of extra hours!

And this evening has been spent trying to sort out the inscrutable mystery which is Microsoft Windows and installing the usual dozen or so 'security patches' required.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I might, if I am very lucky, do some actual writing. My undying admiration goes to Leo Tolstoy and anyone else who managed to write anything longer than a shopping list.