As I write this, the house is in a state of controlled chaos. Screaming drills and stomping workmen’s boots, hammering and sawing herald the arrival of B-Day! That’s Bathroom Day, in case you wondered. Our old and extraordinarily vile bathroom suite is currently sitting on our front lawn awaiting proper disposal. Upstairs, in what truly is the smallest room of the house, various repairs are starting to take place prior to the installation of our sparkly new Italian-designed suite.

Meanwhile, I am doing my utmost to ignore the cacophony in order to concentrate on editing and polishing three Dark Fantasy stories, Frog, New Year’s Day and Swap.   I had thought I'd already polished these stories as well as I was able.  However, fresh eyes often put paid to this assumption!

These short pieces are linked by theme as well as by geographic region, and will possibly be placed together as A Wirral Otherkin Trilogy. Not only do I need to translate them from my native UK English into American English, but also ensure that the formatting is as required, which is why I have just ordered a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, as recommended by the prospective American publisher. If a publisher wants submissions to be set out in a particular way, then there is nothing to be gained by ignoring their guidelines and sending them what they don’t want. Well, nothing apart from a rejection slip, that is!

As can probably be gathered, I am not doing a particularly good job of ignoring the builders – hence this post. Perhaps I should use this as a vaguely plausible excuse to put the kettle on and eat one of the last mince pies. Cancel that last idea – I made them, and my pastry is terrible. No, really, it truly is; I am hopeless at making pastry. Even the frozen variety, which requires only to be rolled out once thawed, is not altogether fail-safe in my hands. Almost without exception it turns into semi-digestible cardboard.

Did you enjoy your Bonfire Night?

I spent it trying to console my dog, who panted and quaked in abject terror for hours until the noise finally petered out. How can fireworks be explained to pets? All they know is that their familiar world is suddenly full of scary loud noises.

So if you were to ask me if I’m one of those spoil-sports who would have private firework displays banned, then I have to say yes I am.

Onto something else…

We are now the proud owners of a new bathroom suite. On Sunday, we travelled into Liverpool and happened to go into a large DIY store which was having a sale. We saw the kind of suite which we want for literally half the price we’d seen asked for it elsewhere. Add to this an unexpected extra 20% discount for sales taken on that day only, due to the DIY store celebrating its birthday. How’s that for a nice bonus, hmm?

Our bathroom has now been denuded of its grotesque tiles. What remains is an extraordinary mess which resembles desert army camouflage – that is, the walls now display a mishmash of grey and beige patches of plaster in various stages of decay, littered with an alarming quantity of potholes. It seems the previous owners had simply tiled over the top of this. No wonder the tiles had begun to fall off!

Last week I mowed the lawn – in January, you’d hardly think it might be necessary but it was looking rather lumpy. How much difference a smooth lawn makes to the look of a place! I pruned back the Solanum crispum, too; it’s not a favourite plant of mine but it was already growing when we moved in here. It nicely fills a large spot in one of the borders, and as my dog’s taken to sleeping beneath it in the summer it can stay.

Have you ever experienced a recurring dream?

For the last two months, I’ve frequently dreamt of moving house. Each dream is completely different, yet the over-riding theme remains the same. I dream of looking around an apartment or house with a view to buying it, or I’m unpacking my things in a new place. The emotional feel of the dreams is positive – of change for the better, of a new phase beginning.

Throughout my life I seem to have experienced quite separate phases, like mini-lives within this one life. These phases are quite distinct from each other, though obviously linked like the segments of a chain. Am I about to embark on another new phase? Time will tell, it seems.

Some of you may recognise these two gentlemen…

I’ve just arrived home from the village, where I bought two 6B pencils and two 8B pencils from the art shop, plus a tin of stain sealant for the kitchen ceiling from the hardware store. We think the ceiling used to be covered with those vile, and highly inflammable, polystyrene tiles. Try as we might, the remaining streaks of old glue refuse to dissolve. I put four coats of paint on that ceiling last year and already marks are starting to show through. Hopefully a coat or two of the sealant underneath a fresh coat of new paint will prevent this happening again.

Monday saw us wandering around Birkenhead’s sales. He came home with some stout walking boots and some brown and tan trainers, which look a bit like old-fashioned football boots and are rather smart. The clothes shops were full to bursting with garbage not worth giving wardrobe space to. I’m sure shops buy-in cheap junk deliberately just so they can pretend to have a sale! I bought two pretty sketchpads, one whose padded pink silk cover is decorated with sewn-on shells, while the other is a thick wad of handmade paper in a wrap-around-and-tie cover made from soft brown tooled leather.

Did I ever mention my stationary fetish?

No, really, I’m being serious. This quirk reared its odd yet harmless little head at puberty, when I developed a fixation with biros. My collection of pens in every colour, shape and brand name was my pride and joy. From there, I moved on to felt tip pens, then those funny furry toys which you stick on the end of your pens. Pencil cases didn’t do much for me but writing paper did. This trait has remained with me. I’ve a drawer in my Gran’s old chest-of-drawers which is so crammed with note pads, sketch pads, charcoal pencils, fine-line ink pens, putty rubbers and similar paraphernalia that it’s becoming a struggle to open it without something getting jammed.

This doesn’t even take into account my collection of old diaries which date back into pre-history (well, it feels like they do, sometimes!) They’re full of riveting observations on my daily life, such as “The cat smashed a vase”, or “Today I made apple and apricot pie”, (well, actually I did make that last night). Even these are bound with silky bows or velvet ribbons, or reveal embroidered bookmarks hiding between long-closed pages. And then there’s the volumes of my poetry, which no-one is allowed to touch under pain of death.

So come on, tell me – what’s your quirk?

Men are not safe let loose in a home, they really aren't! The handle which flushes the toilet snapped off in his hand this morning. Until we get that mended, we're having to use pliers to make the remaining stub of the handle turn! Can you credit it?!! Ah, the joys of life...

Having trailed round every likely shop in search of draught excluders, we were almost convinced that such simple DIY accessories had suddenly become rare. We wanted the kind formed of a thin plastic strip with bristles sticking out, which you then nail to the base of doors.

Draught excluders are the reason why I only ever went on one blind date. I’d got talked into it by a friend who meant well. Not for nothing is the road to hell believed to be paved with good intentions. Anyway, I agreed to meet Some Bloke in a busy city centre café. The conversation was excruciating, as I had anticipated. I can’t recall a thing he talked about apart from TV soap operas, which have about as much appeal to me as a stroll around the North Pole at mid-winter. Anyway, aside from the glaring fact that we had absolutely nothing in common, he had really weird chest hair poking out of the neck of his T-shirt. It was very thick, wiry and black, and for some unknown reason he’d trimmed the ends level so it encircled his throat like a tight, hairy necklace – or a draught excluder. Once that thought had popped into my mind, I had to politely make my excuses and engineer a quick exit. You know those silly, naughty giggles to which you try your absolute best not to permit liberty, but which determinedly creep up from your solar plexus and explode into undignified, demented guffaws? I’m sure I’ve said enough…

You may be forgiven for wondering what any of this has to do with a photograph of my dog. Well, Ygraine acts as a very good draught excluder too, especially for my feet which she is rather partial to snoozing next to. Besides, it’s a cute photo, no?