When the only good thing about today is..... it's Friday

45 minutes in the dentists chair left Sarah with a brand new tooth and Audrey with a brand new attitude when the dentist asked her not to ruin his handy work again.

Her mouth was a little sore afterwards but kids being kids she got used to her new tooth in no time at all.

Next day, Wednesday, I put on my trainers, rain coat and head phones and was followed out the front door that evening by Lara (13) who wanted to accompany me on my 2nd 10km/6/2 mile walk in the misty rain that had descended on Ireland that morning.

It's at this point I should probably explain our family wager suggested by my visiting 'Australian' sister after a wine accompanied family meal.

For six months, ending on the 1st August 2009, four of us have to lose one stone and one of us has to not buy any clothing. If you fail you pay €100 out to the other successful competitors. Simple as that.

So there we are walking along the country roads looking at the wet sheep looking at us and I'm wondring who's more stupid and I'm also thinking I could avoid this kind of situation if I walked more generally, you know, walk the kids to school instead of driving them especially as the school is only 10 minutes away from my house and I should walk to Tesco's for my groceries which is only 5 minutes on foot because it will help me lose that next 10lbs I need to lose in the next 8 weeks.

And the Universe, next day, being the wonderful, complex, synchronistic, helping and healing place that Carl Jung said it was opened it's arms and ears and gave me exactly what it thought I needed to succeed.

Yes, it gave me just the great big incentive I required for my situation by coincidentally busting the automatic gearbox in my car yesterday helping me to walk more and to loose the guts of two thousand euro to get it fixed.

€2,000.00

Obviously it had forgotten we'd changed from £'s to €'s on 1st Jan 1999.