Working from home on Fridays makes the weekend a lot longer. It starts at 5pm on Fridays instead of sometime on Saturday morning when you have sloughed off the ennui of the week. And had fortifying cups of coffee over the interminably crap Irish Times weekend magazine.

The builders who had said they'd come at nine came soon after that and were quietly getting on with their work. As quiet as you can when you are opening up a blocked up chimney. Paddy wanted to know what that Bob Builder was doing* and the builder (who's name was, I kid you not, Bob) was concerned that Paddy would be upset that he was messing with the chimney so close to christmas. Bless.

I cooked. Not in a significant enough way to post over at cook, but I peeled the potatoes and did all the grunt work. Sally had prepared the meat ages ago so I only had to shag it in the oven. And friends came and the food was good and after our guests had departed we watched bits of movies until we capitulated, and went to bed.

Sunday was a lie-in day and when I did deign to surface there was a small, leisurely breakfast. Then Anna and Sally went to a local fair while Paddy and I went for a walk up a local hill. We circled the hill a couple of times in the car before finding a spot to park and walk up. The two asthmatic boys wheezed their way up the hill accompanied by a dog which seemed to have been separated from it's owners. We could hear them calling, but we couldn't work out where they were. He buggered off with some other walkers and when I asked them if he (or she) was theirs they didn't answer. We never made it to the top as Paddy refused to go up, only around, so I managed to convince him to go down and back instead.

When we got home it transpired that a friend who Sally had asked if she would like to help with the decorating had thought Sally meant decorating proper and not christmas decorating and had started pulling the wallpaper off one side of the fireplace before the error was rectified. Luckily, Sally's mum keeps everything and still has a couple of rolls of that paper.

Still no sign of my new computer. Grr. I thought I was joking about the small town in France!

* Paddy is soaking up telly like a UHF sponge. He doesn't call Smarties, Smarties. He calls them Sponsored by Smarties coz The Simpsons is.