The irritation of not having a working television downstairs is starting to get a little more than irritating. It’s moved up a notch from slight irritation to definite annoyance and by Monday it will probably have reached major aggravation but as I am flying to Florence on Monday it will stop being a problem. To be perfectly frank – though to be honest I have trouble being Frank because of the lack of penis – being television-less is not really a major problem, I can live without it quite happily but I resent paying for Sky if we can’t actually watch it. Back in the days of yore when I was a struggling single parent with a small child to entertain I chose to live without a television for quite a time and I didn’t miss it really. But you get lazy don’t you and sadly both my children have grown up with an almost unlimited access to television after that brief foray into TV-free living because it was easier to go with the flow. I, however, am still take-or-leave-it and if I’m on my own in the house for several days I seldom switch it on. And I certainly won’t miss anything much on a Saturday.

I have once again left it too late in the day to sort out my birthday wish list (for those of you wanting to buy me a prezzie the date is the 16th). About a month beforehand various family members start asking me if there is anything I specifically would like for my birthday and I can never think of anything because I’m not a terribly wanty person. Ok so I would like a large summerhouse type thing in the garden but it’s out of most people’s price range and a devil of a job to wrap up – not to mention the fact that if I ask for a large erection in the garden I may get something quite different from expectations - but I don’t hanker for lots of ‘stuff’. As usual though I get to the fortnight before my birthday and finally think of something I would actually really like. It came to me in a flash today. I need tools. No, not those sort of tools. I could one day try to write a post without any references to male genitalia but I am who I am. Anyway, tools. I would quite like my own. I should explain. When my extremely practical and clever-with-DIY little boy grew up he developed a large collection of tools and things which my extremely unpractical and unclever-with-DIY hubby was able to borrow at will for any small task that he might try his hand at. He isn’t that bad really but it just isn’t his thing. It’s not the bag he’s into. But when the time came for the boy to fly the nest he took his massive tool collection with him leaving us with only a few Philips head screwdrivers and a hammer or two. I want some tools to call my own. Hubby wants some too but as he leaves tools in stupid places like in a bucket of water or buried under tons of rubbish in the garage (I say garage but it is actually just a covered area where a garage would be in a normal house) I don’t want to have to share his, I want my own! I am planning a little bit of construction work on my return from Italy and it would be so nice not to have to go round begging a lend of the boy’s tools.

So with this in mind I asked hubby if he has got me a birthday present yet – he said yes he has. Oh nuts.