Yesterday was a mixed bag, beginning with an early morning phone call from friends in Confolens who needed help with a computer problem. These are people that I truly adore, so I was more than pleased to go to see them. The drive was a great treat too, the reds, russets, yellows and golds of autumn leaves glowed like raging forest fires. After a delightful lunch – pasta with pesto, chopped anchovies, grated cheese and pine nuts, I visited the local Aldi to see what was on offer, and came home with a “fully automatic” pasta machine.

So far, so good. I put in a couple of hours of work, then took the dogs for their walk. They enjoyed their usual mad gallop for a couple of minutes, then I noticed Dobbie was only firing on three cylinders. Blood was pumping from his foot leaving huge red puddles. Weighing 40 kilos, he’s far too heavy for me to carry; I led him the half-mile home, and took him into the dining room, where the light is best. The floor was literally covered in blood, deep red globs of it. Dobbie would not let me examine his foot, but allowed me put it into a bowl of water and Dettol, but not before I had bumped into and knocked over the huge datura which over-winters in the dining room, sending compost and gravel all over the floor and into the blood. Somehow I managed to swaddle his foot in Germolene-smeared cotton wool, gauze, a crepe bandage and Elastoplast, which I hoped would at least staunch the bleeding.

While Dobbie retreated to his bed, I cleaned up the blood-compost-gravel mess.

What would be good now, I thought, was a dish of home-made pasta, so I unpacked and assembled the machine, and glanced at the rather confusing directions, which are in French, making them even more confusing. It said somewhere that you can’t ruin pasta. If it’s too dry, you add more liquid; too wet, add more flour. By misreading the directions I ended up with it alternately too wet, too dry, too wet, too dry ….. So getting bored with trying to find the right consistency, I switched it over to the extruding mode, and waited. And waited. And waited. The machine began to growl, and tiny noodles peered timidly through the holes. Aha! The growl became a roar; the machine shook, rattled, and with a mighty orgasmic shiver, stopped. Nothing else happened, so I took everything to pieces and found the part which pushes the pasta through the holes was completely jammed up with pasta of a concrete-like consistency. I had some crackers for dinner instead.

Finally I had time to check my email, and the long-awaited response from my agent had arrived. Having spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to perfect my latest manuscript, I had completely lost confidence in it, and had been on tenterhooks waiting for her comments. As it turned out, they are very positive, which is a great relief. Now we wait while the manuscript is submitted to publishers for their reactions.

Because of the Dobbie drama, I missed line dancing last night. This morning the fire had gone out and I had to collect kindling to revive it, then the pygmy goats escaped and ran riot round the field, mugging the hens, and tomorrow I am committed to going with a friend to a medical appointment. So very reluctantly I had to miss line dancing again, otherwise I’ll never get any work done. I suppose chasing the goats and wrestling with Dobbie does constitute some kind of exercise.

This morning Dobbie is very quiet. The bandages I put on so carefully are a mangled and discarded mess, but his foot has stopped bleeding. I bathed it again in warm water and Dettol, despite his strongest objections. The dining room now smells of Dettol, which is all over the floor, half-way up the walls and over most of the staircase and my shoes. I am hoping to avoid a visit to the vet, because the cat’s treatment has virtually bankrupted us, so I shall wait until tomorrow and see how he is then. He ate some breakfast, so I know he is not too bad.

After reading the pasta machine instructions a little more carefully, I turned out a very professional-looking pile of maccheroni from the new machine. If I hadn’t overcooked them, they’d have been rather good.

Life is full of small ups and downs, isn’t it?