Well I promised you pictures of the finished mural today, but I’ve been rather unwell this week so things have been delayed. We’re going to resume our efforts on Wednesday, so it should be completed by the weekend, and then we’re going to stay on and do Thomas’s.

Yes, I know I said Thomas didn’t want one, but he changed his mind. He wants Transformers. Not just ordinary Transformers though, goodness me no. That would be far too simple. He wants Transformers made of Lego.

Now, the last time I made anything out of Lego was well over two decades ago, and I wasn’t very good at it then, so drawing even simple things as they might look constructed from such material would strain my brain somewhat. And Transformers are quite fiddly to begin with, so there was no way I’d be able to just make them up. But maybe someone had already made Lego versions of them and posted piccies online that I could nick?

They have, of some Transformers, but Thomas was very specific about the ones he wants, and I had no luck tracking down Lego models of them. So I downloaded LDraw, the Lego modelling software, and set about building virtual models of Grimlock, Swoop and Snarl (in both their robot and dinosaur forms, naturally). I’m only halfway so far, but I suppose I’d better get a move on and finish them if we’re starting his mural at the weekend.

We were going to do Ben’s next. That was going to look like this:

…but he told us yesterday he’s gone off Spiderman. And his friends Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk. We might have to rethink that one.

And guess what? In nine months, they might need another mural doing! (That’s my way of telling you she’s pregnant again, not a prediction for when Daniel’s going to go off Fireman Sam.)

I’m hoping it’s another boy. I don’t think I fancy painting fairy princesses.

This week I’ve mostly been violating copyright.

We’ve spent the last six days in Leeds, staying at a Travel Inn by night due to a lack of excess beds at my sister’s house, and painting Fireman Sam on Daniel’s bedroom walls by day. There’s still a fair amount to do, but it’s coming on quite nicely so far.

I took some tatty old t-shirts for us to wear, but we didn’t have any trousers we were happy to get paint on, so we popped to Tesco to purchase the cheapest they had. We both spent the week in Tesco Value women’s tracksuit bottoms, a snip at £3. So if it looks like I’ve got a girl’s bum in the pictures, that’s why.

The paint did have a tendency to seep through the tatty old t-shirts. I’d get back to the hotel and undress after doing some work on the fire engines, and my stomach would be bright red. If I hadn’t known better I’d have thought I’d been stabbed.

Daniel seems pleased with the way it’s progressing, though his tendency to come in and request major redesigns can be a bit disheartening. He’ll point at the painting of Norman on his wall and go “Can you put Elvis there?” or ask us to somehow incorporate the fire station. I wish he’d voiced these concerns at the planning stage. Honestly, customers.

Anyway, we’re going back later in the week to get it finished off over the weekend, so expect pictures of the finished thing on Monday.

A week of cat sitting, a week holidaying in Cornwall, most of a week working frantically to catch up on all the stuff I didn’t do during the previous two weeks, and you’re up to date with my life. Shall we go over that in more detail?

The week of cat sitting was fairly uneventful. With all the medication Charlie was on, it used to be a complex, time consuming operation, involving pills, syringes, funnels, dialysis machines and The Big Book of Fifty-Seven Ways to Coerce a Cat into Swallowing Something Disgusting, but now he’s in the big Animal Hospital in the sky, it’s pretty much a matter of sticking a bowl of food down in the morning and emptying the occasional litter tray.

Cownwall was more interesting. The weather wasn’t great, but by going at the end of August we got it cheap, and it’s not like it was a lot better at the height of summer.

Outside our cottage there were peacocks

and even a little pea baby

I’m not sure what the correct term is for pea babies. Petits pois, possibly?

We made some new friends

We fed peacocks

We fed me

We explored

We relaxed

We watched an open air performance of War of the Worlds: the Musical in the rain

We went to the Eden Project

where I got stung by a wasp after accidentally nearly squashing it. I’ve never been stung before. I didn’t enjoy it. Under the circumstances, though, I suppose it can be forgiven - it was only acting in self defence, after all. What seems less forgivable is that it followed us, and five minutes later, stung Jess too. That was just mean.

Oh, and did I mention there were peacocks?