I reach a Low Ebb.

"I'm around all day if you need a coffee and a chat," offers Short Tony, kindly.

I mutter some words of ingratitude and return to my Ebb.

Later on, I have taken him up on his offer and sit morosely in his lounge. He asks me if I fancy a pint one night, and puts on his wide-screen television for Mr Blair's speech, but nothing seems to cheer me up. The fact is that Ebbs are by definition reasonably low, so my specifically low one is an especial downer.

My builders are still building. They have been building for ten months now. I am bored of their building. I am living out of boxes. The bloke that's been working in the kitchen has been there so long that it's ceased to be a commercial transaction and has morphed into some kind of hostage situation. And the stairs have disappeared again.

I had possessed some temporary stairs, which I had been using to travel from the ground floor to the first floor, and back again. They were to be replaced with more permanent ones, which would hopefully allow me to make that journey for years to come. This was to happen whilst I was away at my in-laws. But, of course, only the ripping out bit occurred, and I am now the owner of Norfolk's most inappropriate atrium.

Woe. Is. Me. As the kids say in America.

It is the 'sharing personal space' bit that is most distressing: I am a natural loner and like to keep myself to myself (nb if you have arrived here from the policeman blog this does not mean that I am a serial killer but if you want to send one of your horny honeytrap WPCs to check like you did with Colin then that is ok as it is important to eliminate me from your enquiries) (plus I have bought a spray from the internet that eliminates dna from sperm). When it comes down to it, I absolutely refuse to share my personal space, unless I have to go into a small space with some people.

Hence my Ebb.

It is a hard and fast rule here that we try to avoid anything approaching self-indulgence. But occasionally I must lapse, and this message has perhaps been the diary equivalent of an Arts Council-funded multimedia version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road performed in Gaelic to the crofters of Uid by blacked-up ex-members of Marillion. But the Internet marches on and march on with it we must; tomorrow I hope to be back with a vaguely amusing anecdote about a beard.