Here is the view from the front of our house onto the worst house in the street.

Believe it or not the guy did it to the place himself and is a skilled builder. Unfortunately his grand plan for recladding the house fell foul of council approvals and lack of time and it languished for over a year.

They put it on the market a few months ago and have seen a string of developers walk round and likely deem it not worth the cost.

It has now sold and will no doubt be a noisy building site for the next few months until they either move in or flip it for a profit. Either way it will only improve our house value to have it fixed up again

Poor little Pennypops has been scratching herself constantly for the past week so we have just taken her to the vets to be safe.

It’s fleas.

Of course it is, dumb humans! Being cautious given she had her thyroid meds changed recently plus we use the dog wash regularly that includes a flea treatment.

She has now had her first tablet that should help things, but we are both scratching ourselves so whether it’s psychological or if we have it too I don’t know.

The Duchess took a liking to these little timers online, one for brewing the tea and another for timing the boiled potatoes. Guess which is for which!

Looks like Dad should apply for royalties, the gnomes at the local garden centre have a definite look to them. They even called it Davey the Council Worker Gnome!

I’ve got ants in my loo roll. How does that even happen? Currently having to throw the first half dozen sheets into the bath on every visit to get an insect-free wipe.

We’ve found ourselves in an escalating war of pleasantries with our neighbours across the road. I seem to recall they started it by dropping off a plate of homemade fried dumplings, to which we returned fire with some chocolate muffins.

Since then there’ve been weekly transfers of plates across the street laden with savoury and sweet treats, not to mention free lemons from their tree (while our freeloading little bastard stubbornly refuses to fruit).

However in the past month they’ve taken things up a notch with two separate salvos of cheesecake, followed – before we could even retaliate – with this amazing platter of home-made sushi. That’s three of their plates sat waiting for return.

Needless to say we’re not taking that lying down, the pride of Britain is at stake!

The Duchess is out of her sick bed and in the kitchen right now whipping up a lemon cake to return fire, and planning a swift follow-up of scones with cream and jam before they can even clean their plates.

That will teach them!

All I can say is it wasn’t me that warranted this warning…

Today we replaced the faded vinyl tiles in our utility room with some fresh and slightly blingier ones. Although they don’t match up as well as they should they look pretty good.

Last weekend was the big Upper Hutt music festival, featuring

• some Aussie bands (couldn’t tell you who, I didn’t get there in time to see them due to Sunday working and not being arsed)
• a local boy done good (Jon Stevens, who took over INXS singing duties after Michael Hutchence passed away)
• plus a couple of 80’s British bands.

I arrived for 5.30pm and caught the backend of Jon Stevens‘ set – good voice in a traditional shirt-open-to-the-waist club rocker way, and welcomed by the crowd as he grew up in Da Hutt before heading over the Ditch.

Back in the 80’s Tom Bailey was 33% of The Thompson Twins who had a fair few hits and played the US leg of Live Aid (with pre-fame Madonna on backing vocals). He lives in NZ now and occasionally tours with a brilliant all-female band; they really made the songs come alive and entertained the crowd. I particularly loved “You Take Me Up” that took me back to ringing Dial-A-Disc back in Hull.

The headliners were Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark — OMD to most — who had a string of hits from 1979 right up to the 1990s. Andy McClusky had a great line in banter and some vintage Dad dancing moves and both he and Paul Humphrey’s vocals were great, plus their big hits all got the appreciation they deserved. However their longer time slot meant the middle third was padded out with half a dozen deep cuts I didn’t recognise and couldn’t get into, so ducked out to refuel on chips and rose.

However I made sure I stuck it out to the end to catch their masterpiece “Enola Gay” from close to the stage, which had the crowd singing at the tops of our voices (yes me included, since nobody could hear me) to round the show off on a high.

They get the size and organization of the event just right, it’s a quick drive from home and finishes by 9pm – what’s not to love?! Bring on the lineup for 2026 so I can know whether to grab another ticket!

The Duchess with her new favourite toy.