With all the rain and blowy weather over the past few festive weeks the UK has been gripped by storms. Terrible floods and accidents from blow down trees or worse has given the insurance companies a serious phone-line-traffic-jam. Our fence was blown down in the first storm over Christmas that had 80 miles per hour winds. A lovely tree was partly uprooted and it will be dry day's job (and a half) to reroot the poor tree and our green house plastic covering was ripped to shreds.

In all this upheaval, I spotted this little chap clutching his red towelling blanket to keep warm. Cute hey? I have this insane Monkey Love ...

Anyway, back to the broken fence. I called our insurance Direct Line a few times and couldn't get through. I tried again on Saturday and after waiting 20 minutes on their 0845 number I hung up. A bit fed up at this stage I looked up their Press Office and found a normal landline, which I tried - only to be told that their office hours are Monday to Friday. So does that mean I was holding on their 0845 number for 20 minutes without any voice message telling me that nobody was home?!

Grrrr .... gotta go, gotta get back on the forever-phone-queue!