I don’t often blog about my kids, but my eldest is ten-years-old (in Year 6) and was lucky enough to get a place on an oil painting course that her school was running today. She trogged off perfectly happily and we were expecting a few daubs of paint on a canvas to coo all over and hang with the rest of our children’s art work on the kitchen cupboards.

Imagine my surprise when I went to collect her and found that she’d painted this:

There’s something nice about the way you start to feel human again during breaks from work. I woke up slowly this morning and finally hauled myself out of bed at the disgracefully late hour of 9am, to find the hubby and kids already up and getting on with the day downstairs.

No rushing. A bowl of porridge, a cup of tea and the ability to check my emails. No panic over lost school socks or mislaid projects; no dashing for the door. No marking books (I’m tactfully ignoring them until the weekend!)

We’re baking gingerbread men this morning and I’m going to write a bit of novel this afternoon - maybe meet up with some friends later.

Hang on - is this what they call having a life? I think I could get used to this.

My old trusty knee-high, black leather boots are on their last legs - no pun intended. The rubber that covered the bottom of one heel fell off when I was doing yard duty the other day, and the soles are getting pretty thin. They’ve been fab boots and covered literally miles of Madrid last February, but it’s time to wave them goodbye and get a new pair.

So, tell me - when I need black boots, why have I just bought these?