Time to write tonight’s post and I find myself sitting on my sofa in my sitting room for the first time in over 5 months. Granted, this is the view:

but it’s an awful lot better than last weekend, most of which I spent on my hands and knees with a scrubbing brush. It’s very, very, very difficult to get paint dust out of the grout in a slate floor, by the way.

Our kitchen project seems finally to be moving to its last few days but progress in the last week or two has been excruciatingly slow and frustrating. The builders clearly want to be somewhere else instead of jet washing the patio slates over and over to try and remove the dust, and I just want my house and my life back. I haven’t managed a singing practice or a trip to the gym for weeks.

I’m hoping to have my sitting room in order, with all of our books moved into the old room that we’re now calling the music room (remember, we called that the morning room for a while) before I depart for India on Sunday. That room has been really shabby for years (we used it as a dining room and always placed guests with their backs to the wall with the damp stains) and is now crying out desperately to be taken in hand but it’s going to have to wait for a while or until some fairy comes with the wherewithal to do it for us.

My new kitchen has been more or less operational for this week and I’ve enjoyed cooking food that I wasn’t able to cook in the temporary kitchen. It concerns me a little how much of my life is tied up with preparation and appreciation of food but we all have our vices I guess. Sadly, I still haven’t managed to adjust from cooking for four to cooking for three (or, indeed, two at times) so there are plenty of leftovers. I made these arancini

from Wednesday’s leftover wild mushroom and butternut squash risotto.and a few mozzarella cherries. Yes, I was trying out my new deep fat fryer (let’s pause and blench guiltily at that thought) tonight.

Our normal Friday night routine takes in fish and chips from the Big Catch. The OH and I pop down there before picking MsDD up from band at 9.15. But tonight I thought it might save a bit of cash if I made fish and chips myself.

Well, the fish is certainly cheaper but, if I’m honest, it’s a bit of a faff. And I don’t know why the fish batter STILL sticks to the frying basket. It doesn’t take long to do the actual cooking but because the fryer is small and things have to be done in batches there was a lot of waiting around involved:

This is Oscar trying his very best to look like an appealing puppy. He loves fish and chips.(Looking at this picture, my eyes are still drawn to the white paint dust in that grout. It’s supposed to be dark grey, for goodness’ sake, and we’ve scrubbed and scrubbed but still it looks white.)

And that’s been my week: unpacking and cooking, mainly. I’ve cooked for the freezer so that they don’t have to cook from scratch next week after coming home from school/work or resort to too many microwave meals.

Tomorrow Saturday Morning Music School restarts so that means that I’m on tuck shop duty. I did my regular Cash and Carry run, taking in a visit to the rubbish tip on the way. I mean, it’s all a bit dull, really, isn’t it? But such is life (Middle class life in Beckenham, @tonyhazzard)

I did manage to take a little time to sit in the OH’s late Nan’s armchair and enjoy a cup of tea. OH has fitted a limescale filter to the Quooker tap now and it makes all the difference in the world to the taste and appearance of our tea. This was my view this afternoon. Which was nice