Working for a cantankerous 83-year-old with the temper and logic of a spoiled toddler frays the nerves, but I've learned over the last few years that you just have to try and bite your tongue and suck it up if you want a pay cheque at the end of the month. It's not like employment opportunities are exactly hammering on the door at the moment, or look likely to in the foreseeable future. I just keep reminding myself that I do it to pay for the things I love in my own time and a roof over my head. But when I think of time ticking away and all the unproductive, unrewarding hours and days lost to this petty tyranny that I can never get back, never reclaim for myself, it's hard not to feel resentful sometimes.

But I don't want to re-start my blog with bitching and moaning! I'm just superstitious enough to suspect such a downbeat start would bode poorly for it! So, to lift mood a little, here's some things that I'm taking a lot of pleasure in at the moment:

- Reading. I'm about a third of the way through Douglas Hulick's Sworn in Steel, the second of his Tales of the Kin series, I read the first one a couple of years and loved it, and had been looking forward to the second book coming out. And I'm pleased to say, I'm not disappointed - our feckless rogue of a hero, Drothe, is as charming and misfortune-prone as ever, and I do enjoy the world he inhabits. So, good stuff. And there's some other much-anticipated sequels due out over the summer so my inner bookworm is squirming with happiness.

- Craft things. I haz a box of brand-new crystalline watercolours to play with! And multimedia ideas galore.

- Sunshine! It's a glorious sunny day out there and when I've finished my coffee I'm going to take myself off for a stroll down the lanes, which at the moment are bordered with rich greens topped by the white froth of cow parsley. May is definitely my favourite month, tra la.