Nick is such a kind soul, buys me such thoughtful, romantic presents; today’s being a 25kg tub of ready mixed tile adhesive. How lovely!

It was, however, just what I needed to get on with tiling the shower; it may not be the best tiling in the world and it’s certainly not been the quickest, but it’s all my own handiwork (apart from cutting the holes for the taps to go through) and I reckon it’s not bad for a beginner! I should be able to do the last two rows of tiles tomorrow, then the fellas can fit the shower cubicle when it’s dry.

I was a little envious, to say the least, of Nick’s and Kieran’s tasks today; both involved working in the garden in the sunshine (it was 25ºC in the shade), Kieran getting everybody’s favourite job of driving the mower round to cut the grass doing it now worse than professionals of commercial lawn mowing Brisbane we all watched on TV. The garden’s sprung into life in the last week’s warmth; there’s blossom on most of the fruit trees, everything has buds on and the first irises opened up today.

We invited our Portuguese neighbours round for aperos tonight, as a thank you for the loan of their plasterboard lifter; they had a tour of the work we’ve done so far and seemed impressed, lots of “Oh la la”ing going on and descriptions of how the house used to be when the old man lived here when they moved in across the road, 17 years ago.