How to cheer yourself up in 10 moves

1. Put the heating on - no need to suffer

2. Have a cup of tea and 2 toasted, very buttery hot cross buns - ditto

3. Play with new iPod, onto which you have managed to load lots of photos

4. Feel smug and technically competent

5. Post a shaky picture of new object of desire

6. Feel less smug/more technically incompetent at sight of blurred image

7. Research cameras online. Find that shaky hands are a common problem - yay! not just you!

8. Feel slightly less technically incompetent, but not quite smug yet

9. Find that upgrading to a digital camera with anti-shake is affordable

10. Determine that tomorrow will be a better day; perhaps more tea and HCBs required

Not quite getting there

Today's plan was to get up early(ish) and go into town. I had birthday presents to buy, book tokens to spend, and maybe I could start my shopping for Australia. There's no way I could risk Customs with that ancient washbag!

But it just didn't come together. I got up feeling weak and feeble, found that nothing wearable was ironed, there was nothing nice for breakfast, and the idea of traipsing round the shops, even limiting myself to John Lewis, began to feel as appealing as hang gliding solo off Macchu Picchu. Just the sort of day where everything you touch in John Lewis gives you a nasty little shock of static electricity, and the trauma makes you forget everything you went in for.

What I would have liked was a friend to come over for coffee and a chat while idling through some nice out of date magazines and moaning half-heartedly about the state of our nails/double chins/pet-wrecked carpets and paintwork (the familiarity of this can be strangely uplifting) but my friends are all at work or have been retired long enough to feel the urge to go out doing good works in the parish. This is the downside of my a) being a bit older than most of them, and b) being retired a year early, and c) having no intention to do anything in the parish yet that looks remotely like work. (Notice the 'yet' - that's so that you don't think I'm totally feckless.)

So I went to Sainsbury's instead, unimaginative but necessary, and stocked up on nice fruit and yoghurt, as well as a pack of hot cross buns, enticed into the latter by Posy. I think that I'm having a delayed mope because the Lovely Son has gone back to London. The dog does her moping at the window as we set off for the station, and is back to her chipper little self by the time I return alone, but it takes me a little longer. Two hot cross buns and a cup of tea have helped, though chipper isn't how I'd describe my view of the world today. Best stay home, I think, rather than risk buying books on Empty Nest Syndrome or hideous holiday footwear that looks like recycled tyres. Maybe I should do my nails and practise those chin exercises.