Well, something worked!

Susan said a prayer to St Anthony and I thought about looking in the places where the camera definitely wouldn't be, and there it was - in the bottom of my handbag, along with old receipts, powdery tissues, biros that don't write any more, and all sorts of unidentifiable gritty bits that came from heaven knows where.

It had come to the hairdresser with me. Just think, I could have taken scary Hallowe'eny sort of photos of myself in a black nylon smock with my hair dye applied, laughing at hairdresser Dan's plans for his stag night in Prague this weekend.

I have spent about 2 hours ransacking the house for this blasted camera, just to take rather pitiful flash photos of ugly things that only I and a couple of you - the ones in a similar state of domestic chaos and disorder -  might get excited about, and there it was, in the handbag sump, gathering debris.

My mother, were she here, would have given St Anthony the credit. When we were children, she would have us all saying prayers to him whenever anything was lost or mislaid, and she, very haphazard in her Catholicism, believed firmly that it was always he who helped us find the scissors/purse/specs/dinner money amidst the general untidiness. My own approach is to look in all the likely places first, then whittle it down to the very least likely of all, and usually it will turn up. (Alternatively, you could buy/apply for a new one, as in the case of bank or loyalty cards, at which point, the lost one will appear just at the very second that it has been cancelled.)

So here you go.

I shall spare you the squashed frogs. It's dark outside, and raining, and I fear adding to my local reputation as the madwoman incomer who walks with ill-assorted coughing dogs and a little tabby cat by creeping about, bent over double, searching in the rainy darkness for a squashed frog to photograph.

I won't open the boxes that contain the floor tiles, but I know that in order to sleep tonight, you needed to see the rest, especially Malcolm, who likes a bit of builders mayhem. Perhaps I should have brushed my hair first, but the point is, no grey roots!

Personally, I can't wait for the After shots. Maybe next week, before the ever-increasing grey emerges again....