I wish I was a chestnut tree, nourished by the sun, with leaves and twigs and branches, and conkers by the ton.

I'm wrapped up in Nic's fleecy dressing gown right now, under a blanket on the sofa. Yup, I'm feeling a wee bit lurgied! It's all been a bit full on round here recently, and I think I am a bit run down. Luckily for me, Nic is extremely efficient at looking after me when I'm ill, so I should be fine.

I hope you all had a good weekend. I had endured a very busy week at work, and was looking forward to resting and having fun at the weekend. Nic and I had a very quiet Friday night in with some wine and a DVD, and then I had a much-needed lie in on Saturday. The dress I had bought on Ebay arrived so I was able to wear that on Saturday, along with my 50p bargain Dorothy Perkins tights!

I was nice and domesticated on Saturday, catching up with some housework and getting to play with my new vacuum cleaner. I know that this probably means that I am officially very old and boring, but I am so pleased with it. We bought a new kettle last week and got a voucher entitling to us to 20% off anything we bought in Robert Dyas. I think I have mentioned before about how dire our vacuum cleaner was, so Nic thought it would be a good chance to buy a new one. He went along on Friday morning and bought us a Hoover upright vacuum cleaner. It's this one:

I vacuumed the flat on Saturday and, where it would have taken a few hours to do with the crappy old vacuum cleaner, it took around half an hour with the new one. The floors are clean and bright, and this made me very happy!

On Saturday evening we headed out with Sugar Plum and N to celebrate Lauren's birthday. I had only planned to stay out for a few hours, but we ended up making a night of it. Tom joined us, and Caroline and Ben and Lauren's friend Vicky were there also. After closing time we headed back to our house to drink champagne and eat chips. It was excellent, it isn't often that I'm the person who suggests extending the party, but I was enjoying myself so much. Nic and I didn't get to bed until 4 am, much later than I had intended!

On Sunday it was bright and sunny so Nic and I walked along to the tip shop to give them our old vacuum cleaner and have a browse around before walking over to The Saxon Mill in Warwick with Viv. It was a little bit too cold to sit outside, but we settled down inside for a few drinks and something to eat. It was a very enjoyable way to spend our Sunday, and walking back through the fields in the dark was beautiful.

The weekend wasn't as quiet as I had planned for it to be, but this worked out for the best, I think. On Sunday I heard that my grandfather had suffered a heart attack and was in hospital. It's the second heart attack he has had this year, and for various complicated family reasons, my dad isn't able to go to the hospital to see him. It was very upsetting to speak to my dad and hear how upset he is and not to be able to do anything, and I was lucky to have both Nic and Viv around to talk things through with.

I think because of the bad news from home, I slept very badly on Sunday night and had a variety of troubling dreams. In one of them I was trying to catch a bus. The bus stop was at the top of a hill in my home town, and I was in a hurry. It was a fairly standard anxiety dream in that when I tried to walk to the bus stop I couldn't, my legs felt rooted to the spot and I had to drag them along in a very painful way. There were lots of elderly men on the path who were reaching out their hands to help me along, and eventually I reached the bus stop, where one of my aunts was waiting for me. I woke up at that point, and felt very distressed. I was even a little bit surprised when I got out of bed and found that I was able to walk. Last night I dreamed that I was at my grandparents' house, but outside it rather than indoors. My friend Mrs Z was there, sitting in a rocking chair by the door, nursing her baby. I sat on the front step to chat to her, and it was very pleasant for a while, until someone else arrived and started acting in a very hostile way towards me. That was stressful too, and luckily I woke up before it escalated too much. At any time of stress my dreams are always very vivid and this is no exception, and although both were surreal in nature they were also very clearly linked to what is going on in my life at the moment.

Anyway, on to more cheerful topics. I was working from home today, which was much needed, and here is what I wore:
You can't really see it all that clearly in the photo, but I'm wearing the purple cardigan I bought last week in Warehouse.

I'm off out soon, braving the cold to see Sugar Plum and Martha in The White Horse for a coffee and a chat. I have a more cheerful blog planned for this evening, in which I am going to discuss some of the unfashionable things I like. See you then!