…hooray! My accountant is going on maternity leave in a month’s time, which prompted me to get my papers together. It’s not unusual nowadays for me to start to weep in panic at the prospect of extra admin, but I got over that by lunchtime yesterday and, of course, once I actually did the work and put everything in order, it calmed and cheered me. Stupidly, I hadn’t done the auction accounts straight after the sale, so it was rather more work than if I’d had everything at my (literal and figurative) fingertips, but it wasn’t too bad. And she had given me a crib sheet, so I could add this year’s figures against last year’s. I had all the different categories of income (it’s not that many or much, just complicated) typed up, to her surprise. And it’s done. She’ll tell me what I owe and I don’t have to think about it any more.

Tim is in Reading this week, so Eloise cat and I are looking after each other. I had to look after her today, as she had a rather unfortunate tummy upset and needed a degree of clearing up. She doesn’t lash out, but she did try to get away and I’m rather scratched. After she’d had a long sleep, she felt much better and cuddled me on the sofa for a long time.

One of the pleasures of sitting here is looking out on the sunset through the Scots pines by the road. It’s a bit late for sunset in fact, but the sky is still a pinkish yellow and rather pretty. We had a sunny evening after a wet and chilly day, but at least that means my young plants didn’t need to be watered. I must pot up the tomato plants in the next couple of days and tidy up the greenhouse.