I'd just like to state for the record that given the choice between a week's worth of heavy clinics in Crawley, East Grinstead and Damascus, featuring hospital transport patients, nonagenarians and blind people with learning difficulties, anger management issues and highly infectious diseases, AND the chance to have two of Amelie's friends round for tea again, I'd definitely go for the former. It would be a lot less exhausting. And I'd be more likely to get out alive.

Suffice it to say that I'm spending my annual leave counting down the days until I go back to work. Or I would be if I had any strength left after spending an hour in the park with three five-year-olds and a toddler. We only went out because they were wrecking the flat, but by the end of it, they were wrecking my nerves. Frankly I need a holiday. And the tragedy is, I'm already on one.

Anyhoo, the good news is that the builders have gone...

Although they left one of their hard hats behind. I tried to shout after them, but they couldn't hear me through our new double-glazed windows.

By the time they'd finished, the entire place was covered in brick dust and I'd developed a nasty cough, but on the plus side, I'd formed a close personal bond with one of the window fitters. It transpired that he lives in Basildon, which is where I grew up, and has been commuting to Brighton on a daily basis for the past few weeks just to fit the council's new windows. He and his colleagues have been driving for four or five hours a day, in order to work a nine hour shift, five days a week, with nothing but a cup of sweet tea from yours truly to keep them going.

Putting aside the issue of why Brighton & Hove City Council is employing window fitters from Essex, it led to an interesting conversation about how much Basildon has changed over the past twenty years, which featured two uses of the phrase "I'm not racist, but..." (neither of them from me) and one excellent and unexpected use of the term "breeding like rats". I tried to change the subject at that point, but all I could think of was the upcoming European elections, and I wasn't sure that was a good area to move into.

Anyhoo, the good news is that it's all done. I did have to spend most of Tuesday evening hoovering, and Wednesday morning was filled with the sound of drilling as they did the windows of the flat above. At one point, the noise got so bad that Lisa couldn't hear the people shouting on Jeremy Kyle. But by the end of yesterday, a sense of calm had been restored to our world.

Which is why we thought we'd invite Amelie's friends round. We're idiots, but I think we've learnt our lesson.