Lovely to have Nick Treby on board, despite his penchant for Martyn Joseph. I expect you will be following my running career with interest, Nick, and I yours.

So far, M and S have sent another gift card for £2 to cover the postage, but no flowers or manager on the doorstep.

On a much more positive note, I had fabulous customer service today, a bank holiday, from Lakeland. I emailed to say my 18 month old kettle had broken (the lid hinge broke and it is unopenable) and could they repair or send a spare part in preference to a replacement. They could do neither, but are sending a new one and then sending a courier to collect the old one. So, buy your knickers from Lakeland, not M and S. Except they don't do knickers so you would have to wear sandwich bags or tupperware equivalent, which would leave you with an interesting profile.

Now, the real meaning of Christmas, of course, is more free time for DIY and exercise. After my rallying (geddit) from my virus and playing tennis on Tue night, mid housegroup 'Share the spare' evening, I went to the gym on Wednesday, for a freezing cold swim on Thursday, for a 8 mile run on Friday, for a 10 mile cycle ride on Saturday, for a re program at the gym and an hour of tennis yesterday and another hour in the gym and hour of tennis today. Yahoo! Feel great! R and I have invented a great new version of the rules of tennis to mean that I get to practise what I need to and he does too. Here goes. Its complicated, but means we end up playing really well matched games, today I beat him 4-2, games take ages and we are always doing the deuce advantage dance over and over again. The rules are - I can win points any way I can, if I win it, I get the points. I can also lose a point by double faulting on the serve. Got it so far? R, who is way better than me, can only win a point if he hits it at the net and wins it. So, he works hard on coming to the net, which is what he needs to work on, and i work hard on trying to keep him back, which is what I need to do. Oh, and he doesn't do proper serves. Else I would have no hope and may as well sit in the bar. It's so much more fun and I feel like R is getting something out of us playing together rather than just feeding me backhand practice. I am much better now too and feel really positive about 2012. I do not understand the coming to the net thing at all. If I ever did it, I would just stand there and watch the ball sail overhead.

The run on Christmas day was fab - great weather, went with R and showed him my long run over to Manor Farm and back, via mud and thorns and freezing cold puddles. R likes running on flat roads, so it wasn't his favourite ever run. It was possibly my favourite ever run, went there and back via Netley Common as well so lots of time off road.

As well as the exercise, we have been busy renovating our kitchen. Due to a clerical error at the tax office, they sent me a cheque, so I have spent it on new floor tiles, due to come tomorrow at 8am. So we had to rip the lino up, and used it as a good opportunity to have a big clean out and also to repaint the dining area walls and gloss, and you know how these things go, we ended up working out some new storage solutions and R did a few trips to B and Q ( buy buy buy!) and we hope to have a much smarter and cleaner space for Wendy the cleaner to clean every Wednesday, by next Wednesday. The whole thing is purely for her suprise when she walks in the door. We arranged for the fitting to be done tomorrow and Wednesday, hence sending the girls up to mum so they are out of the way, but today Craig, the tile man, rang and said he wouldn't be able to start until Thursday. I was assertive and said that we were living in a campsite, all the appliances were unapplied and the children had been sent off for a very specific interval of time to allow unhindered access to the kitchen, and that we needed it started tomorrow. He rang back later and said someone would be with us at 8am. Watch this space. Interestingly, when he said his set piece about not being able to make it, in my head, I said 'oh, ok then' but kept my mouth shut and just stood in silence for ages deciding how to best put across how much this inconvenienced me without sounding angry. Good huh? For someone who has a MBE for services to the 'open gob before thinking' industry I am proud of my assertive silence.

The girls went home with Granny M to Granny B's, yesterday, hence us having time to do DIY and play tennis and eat ready meals cos the cooker is disconnected. Poor H was the last of the Bowens to come down with the dreaded virus, suffering with vomiting on Christmas eve at about 1am, AFTER Santa had visited, with A therefore waking up with all the cuffuffle and rustling papers continuing until I think I said that Santa would come back and take it all away again. They are cute, we have always told them that it is a fun pretend thing that we all go along with, and they love it, not minding at all when, for example, I told them that Santa had asked me to go and do some shopping for him as he was busy. I had a very technological Christmas, with a new computer that I didn't even open, too scared and amazed, a pedometer which can tell me how far I have gone, and a Digital Radio for the kitchen. The radio seems to be adverse to BBC channels, so we have listened to Wave for two days and know the adverts off by heart. Where would you go to get a new Renault? R threatened the radio with a knife and plugged it in to a different plug and it seems to be ok now with Radio 4.

Christmas was also a bit of a towel fest, as I had asked my mum and she had sensibly bought as requested - so R and I both got big towels, and the girls got those ones you put on your head and look like a monkey or a cat. I also have ordered some travel towels for gym use which should come soon. None too soon, as you can never have enough towels! Just think how handy it would have been for Joseph to have had a lightweight travel towel or two in his knapsack to pop in the manger at the crucial moment.

In the few days before Christmas I tried to renew my library books by phone as they are due back tomorrow. On the first day, the recorded message said they had trouble with their phone system and to try again later, I did, same again. Day 2: They had all evacuated the building, said the message. OK. Day 3 - due to the bad weather all the staff are busy taking calls about snow and ice and not renewing library books. I didn't bother calling on Christmas day, I had a feeling they would have a recorded message for every event.