BECKY SHEAVES

As a family, we'd grown used to ignoring this embarrassing old shed... But every so often its grey, pebble-dashed grimness does take me aback

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EXCUSE me if this all sounds a tiny bit moany. I write this despatch from a sea of mud and part-finished building projects. If anyone would like to beam me up, Star Trek-style, to a land of completed construction works, ideally where it is also dry underfoot, please do so at your earliest convenience. If that is as I fear impossible, I will just have to tough it out until the spring. By then, surely, all this renovation will be sorted out. Honestly, I can't wait.

Obviously, it is madness to start three separate building projects at the same time. And another wise move would be to do all this renovation work in the dryer months of the year. Finally, smart people would surely not have seen their better (and much more practical) half fly off to Australia for the duration. And yet, such has been my life recently.