Up here the Forest parts across the top of the hill and there is a big track with bracken either side that’s open – I chose to walk there because it had been a sunny day but I’d missed most of it, so I wanted to walk as far as possible in the light! Because the crest of the hill is open, it catches the last of the daylight.

I was walking quietly along the track with the dogs a little ahead of me when suddenly I saw a big black boar sow come out from the side of the track just beyond them and stand the centre of the track. She looked at me and I quietly called the dogs back to me and made them lie down.

She trotted a little way along the track towards me and stood there looking at me for 15-20 seconds. I started to very gently and slowly move towards her, hoping for a photograph on my phone, but suddenly, 4 beautiful little toffee and ginger coloured piglets cam running out and started trotting about round her feet.

I stopped, and she stood her ground. We had one of those wonderful wildlife moments when she looked at me and I looked at her and we both took a good long look at each other. Then one of the piglets started to trot towards me and she shoved him with her nose and ran off into the bracken on the other side of the track, with the piglets all following.

What was lovely was that for a few minutes I could hear gruntings and snufflings in the undergrowth beside the path so I stayed still and made the dogs stay there, so she didn’t become spooked and charge. I could just imagine her checking on all the babies under the leaves.

We went on our way. About 5 minutes later, we saw a huge brown boar cross the path just in front of us, so again I had the dogs lie quiet but by the time I’d gotten close to where he was he had gone. I guess he may well be the father – but there was so much boar sign in that part of the Forest I’m sure there is more than one family there.

What a wonderful weekend surprise!  For more info and images, including some videos, visit my Forest of Dean Wild Boar page

Am knackered from gym, feeling rotten from being on new restricted diet since Thursday, Rud has given up smoking since last week and at the grouchy phase -house not filled with much loving sympathy right now. Even dogs hiding from us both since Saturday.

The AA recovery (my Alfa Romeo comes with everything - you just call them and they allegedly just magically make everything ok and give you a courtesy car) have managed to totally screw up everything. To cut a long story short (and I mean a LONG story)……

Car requested recovery at 1520 Monday afternoon. AA were notified I was a lone female driver in a rural location and had no other driver in household or family living nearby. Car actually recovered just after 1800 at night. 2.5 hours but it was broad daylight. Disappointing but not the end of the world. Request recovery to a local garage as the Alfa Dealer will be closed by the time they get there. Denied. Told it will be kept in secure lockup overnight.

Subsequently on Monday evening, AA managed to

• send van not recovery truck which is useless.
• cancelled recovery trucks
• passed car on 3 times from driver to driver
• left my car at one stage in a public car park of a closed supermarket, completely unattended with key stuck in the exhaust pipe!UNBELIEVABLE.

Still getting calls at 920 at night from AA drivers with my car asking what I want to do with car as Alfa Romeo dealer now closed - I don't know nor care by now – the AA has had it for over 3 hours. Complain to AA then AA calls me back and says I need to sign a disclaimer as they cannot deliver my car to the dealer because it is closed (which I told them hours ago) and it has to be overnighted and they will not accept the liability in case anything happens to it. I warn them I will NOT be doing this and hang up on them. They call back and apologise and offer to send bouquet of flowers.

Courtesy car dropped off by Alfa Romeo - arranged via who? The AA.Tuesday I have calls all day about car. AA cannot find my car - do I know where it is? AA cannot find car - what lockup was it stored in (how do I know?). AA taking car to Alfa dealer - where is it, can I give them directions they cannot find the Alfa dealer. Car refused by dealer as they know nothing about it - AA have not booked it in - what should they do (at this point I actually told poor driver what he could do).

Car now safely at Alfa dealer. Dealer cannot process car - AA did not give them any paperwork. Complain to AA. They apologise. Complain to Alfa Romeo about AA. They take up the case after all sorted.

Today Wednesday, calls start again. AA want courtesy car back. I only have it for 48 hrs so they want it back by 1030 tomorrow. Car is not being looked at till 430 this afternoon as AA did not deliver car to dealer until yesterday AFTERNOON (24 hrs after call placed - dealer is 20 miles away) and too late to fit into yesterday’s schedule anddid not have any paperwork and AA had not told them it was coming.Numerous calls to AA bouquet of flowers not here either yet but who cares? AA offer to pay for the courtesy car for an extra day. Alfa Romeo not informed so Alfa Romeo call to arrange getting courtesy car back. AA have NOT arranged extra day properly, no paperwork so I am still billable. Numerous calls to Alfa Romeo later they get correct paperwork from AA by fax. Apologise profusely and agree I have numerous causes of complaint with the AA.

Ah... that feels better. Then my fishtank filter broke so have spent the last 2 hours up to armpits in salt water fighting off shrimps (Knew it was a bad idea to train them to hand feed and run up your arm to beg for food!) and trying to fix. Attacked by territorial clownfish. Nemo is a myth they are VICIOUS. Sorry just have to vent.

To the AA: You are so utterly, utterly useless it is beyond words. I have records of all telephone conversations and will be complaining in writing once I get my car safely back.

What's astonishing is that usually I'm never ill and don't get all these bugs going around.  I'm like Typhoid Mary, a carrier but never getting them myself!

Here is my latest creation, modelled by my Mother.  Here she is modelling my Christmas present to her, along with a stunning "deer caught in the headlights" look!  This knitting pattern wins a prize for being the pattern I had to unpick and rework the most times ever - thanks Noro for that cryptic pattern.  For those with a technical curiosity, you go from a 12 stitch and 6 x 2 stitch pattern repeat to a 5 x 2 and 10 stitch pattern repeat with NO INSTRUCTIONS whatsoever!  Ah well I have a history of staying up till 2am Christmas Day finishing my Mother's Christmas presents...

2 days after coming out of hospital I was back at the doctor’s for an abscess on the base of my spine! After a week that had to be cut out, and there followed ten days of poor old Rud having to look after me. Kneeling on the bed crying with pain, with my bottom stuck up in the air while Rud changed my dressing and re-packed my wound with a drain/wick, it suddenly struck me this wasn’t quite what he had in mind when he said “I’ll always look after you…”

I guess you know you’ve been burning the proverbial candle at both ends (not to mention in the middle) when you’ve actually got a wick sticking out of your backside!

The past week has been hectic as I realised that when planning a big Christmas party for friends/co-workers/family I had neglected to either predict or bear in mind having to have cards written, presents wrapped and house and tree decorated before it. But Saturday was a lovely day – starting at 930 with bacon sandwiches with my Dad, then Father Christmas and Jack Frost steam train ride, which was magic for all the little kids.

Then mountains of food and drink and a big party all day. By 630 everyone had gone home, leaving Rud and I with all the leftovers to eat and the evening to ourselves to rest and unwind! Magic!

And the best bit is that now I’m totally ready for Christmas! The cards were all exchanged yesterday (at one stage it looked like the Post Office with a line of ladies at the dining table sorting cards into piles!), presents wrapped and under the tree, everything’s done! I even had time to take the dogs out into the Forest for a couple of hours today – this is what the runup to Christmas is SUPPOSED to be like! (But I won’t deny Rud had a hard time with me last week being overwrought at times getting it all done!)

I've written a fair few hubs there now and they are doing well, and (dare I say it) I just LIKE them!  They look good, professional, and are a great showcase for the writing work we do at the Exquisite Writing Team.

Here is a cool widget that shows the pages I've done (called Hubs) and i just love using this site.  It's quick, easy and entertaining and I get a lovely professional looking result.

One on affiliate marketing monetization, and how to monetize a website using affiliate marketing.

One on the use of traffic exchanges for business websites

One on how to develop content and information websites

and one on small business websites

Obviously this is a big achievement, and I'm very grateful to the team for making this possible!

The checkout man picked up a cucumber and of course, it wouldn't scan through the beeping machine, so he had to key in the convenient 75 digit number by hand instead.

"Do you eat a lot of salad?" he said, waving a cucumber at me, with 2 in his other hand. "No, not at all," I replied without thinking, "we should eat more of it really." He smirked and winked at me, and for one horror struck moment, time stood still….

Over my embarrassment, I got home, and went to change my shirt. The cleaner had been. In my bathroom was one of those large silver (at least, in this case) intimate objects. This one even had a wrist strap. So does my Samsung i780 Blackberry equivalent phone, by the way, but let's just say I don't mind being see with that in public.

I got a terrible sinking feeling. "Umm… Did you put this in the bathroom?" I asked Rud, hopefully. "No," he said, "where did that come from?"

I realised the cleaner must have found it, and discreetly put it in our bathroom for us. Which would have been fine, had said object actually been mine. Or Rud's. Or even "ours".

I can only assume a B&B guest (we take Bed & Breakfast guests in our spare room) had left it behind somewhere and it had ended up caught up in the washing or something…

Still, I should be grateful for small mercies. Today would have been an exceptionally bad day for it to fall out of a pocket in Tesco.

We had a fantastic client who has allowed us to post his work as samples, and another amazing client that wrote us a lovely testimonial, so the Music writing section is now up and running. With Rud being a musician it makes it easy for us to do audio and music related work! We get a lot of queries to write music sites, press releases, bios, MySpace pages etc etc. It was just so nice to get such a lovely client endorsement.

OUTSIDE the office it was a hot day. Sunny, warm, and surprisingly buzzy…

We have with wasps. We are inundated with apples on the trees this year; the branches are almost touching the ground (and in some cases resting ON the ground). And we are discovering that dogs and wasps don't mix!

Gilly got stung in his mouth today, Rud stood on a wasp yesterday in the bedroom, and we chased them out of the office all morning – and it became apparent that either we have a nest, or we have some kind of weird affinity with wasps!

Enter the apple trees. Where the odd early apple has fallen off, aided and abetted by a rather careless mower man on Tuesday, they are mangled on the ground (well, chopped to rotting pieces by said lawnmowing). And a wasp magnet.

I had a look and saw at least 30 under ONE tree (we have 5 apple trees, one pear albeit sans fruit this year, on greengage and one plum) and I decided that was it. This was WAR!

Armed with a wasp trap, homemade from a drinks bottle full of apple and mango juice, I braved the garden to stand the trap on the railings around the deck. Nearly standing on another wasp, I decided to make another – they take all of about 2 minutes to make! By the time I had the second one ready, the first trap had already caught 3 wasps! Now, for all the Buddhists out there, yes, the trap DOES kill the wasps, but there are a lot of worse ways to go than drowning in apple and mango juice. Ask my slugs.

By 6 this evening we were wasp free at least for the most part, and I'm very relieved. Gilly isn't exactly famous for his common sense (this is the dog that runs into lampposts because he doesn't look where he is going!)