Alarm bells ringing.

I woke at 2.30am to the noise of the barn alarm going off. I leapt out of bed, pulled on my mink to cover my nakedness, grabbed the hockey stick, ran down the stairs, pulled on my gum boots, unlocked the backdoor and realised two things. Firstly, it wasn't our alarm, it was the farm across the fields. Secondly I had a hangover. Not good hun... where did that come from? An inventory of the empties suggested that I'd got the Louis Allowance single bottle of dry white to stay down using a litre of Peroni. Well what the hell? Worse things have happened at sea. Rum, buggery and the lash for instance.

Moments later I was fast asleep again, conscience and hangover put back into the box with a triple paracetamol washed down with a Berocca on the rocks.

When I woke for the second time I felt as if I'd been cage fighting all night. Even my teeth felt loose. This must be the after effects of that Pilates class I went to yesterday. They all looked like flakes so how come it hurt me, the tough little yoga bod so much? I mixed another Berocca (can't be too careful) which I promptly knocked over and then had to spend half an hour on my hands and knees mopping up bright orange sticky liquid with bog paper. Today it was important to be fit, be well, be perky and get my children back to their schools, a 200 mile round trip, without showing how much it hurts. I always pray for sunshine on days like this, so I can wear my sunnies.

And then the snows came. We decided after the third snowflake settled that enough was enough and binned the Back To School plan and went for a great walk in the snow. As we walked home, I noticed that next door's cows were singing Meat is Murder by The Smiths. Truly. Listen to it. Maybe the alarm was cattle rustlers over at theirs?