We were planning to move up to the spare room while our bedroom had a makeover but when Pascal (the local Jack of all trades) popped in to see how we had progressed with the paper stripping he informed me he was not planning to start painting till Saturday.

Oh great, I had spent ages today stripping the beds and moving out the last of the furniture ( all whilst feeling under the weather with a cold to beat all colds) only to have to start remaking beds so that we could sleep in our room for a few more nights.

(In case you are wondering why we don't just move to the guest room anyway there are three reasons:

1)CC and Jay value their privacy and 'upstairs' is their domain where they can play music to their hearts' content and generally feel stressfree.

2)Bear has a tendency to pee on the floor when he goes to the toilet and CC and Jay are not too keen on him using 'their' loo.

3) The cats are used to sleeping in or on our bed and they are not allowed upstairs.)

Anyway, I was trying to make the bed - with plenty of 'help' from a couple of cats - when I became aware of a burning smell. Jay had been roasting peppers and it smelled a bit like that so I went through to check that the grill was definitely off.

Meanwhile, Whale had a few problems: - he wanted me to check his mattress which had become 'lumpy' (a rucked up sheet) and then look at his bum where he had found a piece of dry skin that was sticking up (!?!)

When I eventually got back to bedmaking Jay came through.

"There's a burning smell in the kitchen. Do you know what it is?"

"I thought it was your peppers but I did check the grill was off"

"It was turned off over an hour ago but the smell is quite strong."

Of course, with a cold, one's sense of smell is impaired but I went through to the kitchen and the smoke was clearly visible while the smell was strong enough to permeate a pretty blocked nostril or two.

However, after a whisky with Pascal followed by a hot toddy provided by Jay, it took a while for the brain cells to register that the last of our homegrown beetroot - a dozen lovely little, sweet, tender roots rescued from the potager this afternoon were boiled dry in the saucepan.