ah, hello grindstone, my nose seems to think we've met before?

At last, I can use my computer again without resorting to valium and profanity.

I managed to welcome on board some kind of virus shenanigans that kept sending me robust invites of a sexual nature ( and no - I haven't been surfing THOSE kind of websites). My security system identified it well enough and stopped it from raiding my bank account or luring me into the sordid world of kitchen implement sex, but it couldn't stop the scores of pop-up messages from flooding my screen. This slowed my computer down terribly. It is a feeble beast anyway, as it only houses one memory card with the capacity to store about three grocery shopping lists, but after contracting this illegal alien, my machine seemed to experience complete hard drive lobotomy. It's binary code language appeared to have been reduced by 50% so that it now only communicated in noughts. I had to reset it to a previous date in the end to put a stop to it.

It wasn't so terrible in the end; hauling myself back into the saddle that is employment. I went back last week on a run of three nights. As I walked onto the unit, familiar smells greeted me. Antiseptic, food, fermenting bed sheets; these were the odours that welcomed me back. One of the residents (codenames used to protect the not so innocent) Mrs DG, was sitting on the sofa in the lounge. She suffered global brain damage several years ago after a heart attack and hypoxia as a result. This has left her very labile in presentation; as I knelt down in front of her to say hi and ask how she was, she touchingly caressed my cheek and smiled. Three minutes later, she had bounced up onto her feet, wild-eyed and threatening to insert a cup of tea up my arse. It's how things are here and you never take it personally. Hell, if you did - you're in the wrong job.

It was the staff christmas night out last friday, held in a pub just outside Much Marcle. By God, it was almost splendidly awful. We were ushered into a small function room at the back of the pub. What it's function is remains unclear, but I would guess broom cupboard. It had a dance floor the size of a hearth rug. The company was good and much laughter and piss-taking did the rounds, but we were served a curiously tasteless succession of courses for our meal, except for the cheesecake which was overburdened with flavour and stamped all over my taste buds. It was the all-time vampire of deserts and had sucked all of the flavours out of the other foods.

After the food, the dancing. This was excrutiatingly embarrassing as the party just didn't kick off. Even known ravers were reduced to shuffling their feet listlessly and staring at a spot on the floor. People began to peel away in hearty numbers so that there was more life on the car park outside the pub. By eleven p.m. there was just the DJ, the hospital lush (the suspicion remains that she drinks surgical spirit; a hospital our size shouldn't be getting through 200 litres a week) and me and two workmates. Hayley is a girl always looking for the next party, so she disappeared into the fleshpots of Ledbury. I was staying at another work colleagues house, as I couldn't drive home after drinking. So it was, that we stumbled through the pitch dark to her manor.

In this, I do not exaggerate. Penny lives in a place called Bickerton Court Manor. I have looked it up on the Net and discovered that it has a recorded history from the sixteenth century at least. It is a wonderful place! She gave me a tour and its innards seemed to ramble off forgetfully in several different directions. Penny has three children and they have a whole world to explore in that place. They could start a game of hide and seek and not meet again for the rest of that week. Mealtimes must become search and rescue missions. I lost count of the bedrooms, dining rooms and staircases strewn around. There was a fantastic cellar in the bowels of the dwelling which smelt ancient and harboured wooden beams which must have been living, growing trees several hundred years ago. I was given a large room, from a selection of large rooms on the second floor, North Wing. It was as cold as a tomb, so that I wore a layer of clothing in bed and piled two thick quilts on top of me to stop me slipping into a coma. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered about the lives, the faces, the worries of the people who had resided here in times past. I was in the old servant's quarters, Penny had told me. Typical, really.

As befits an ailing bladder, I awoke in the depths of the night with a desperate need to pee. It was pitch black and, half asleep, I was disorientated and edged, crab-like, across the room to reach for a source of light I could see. I quickly found myself grappling with a huge set of dusty curtains. Somehow, I had skewed about and made my way to the main window. The source of light I had been lured to was a crescent moon. I was woken at about half-eight by a smiling Penny and the alluring aroma of a mug of coffee. A hot drink in the morning is always the civilised way in which a host tells you, 'Get your arse out of bed.' I was fetching my ten years old son, Matthew, for the day today so soon thanked Penny and headed off.

It was a glorious, pin-sharp day. As I drove along, the Wye Valley presented me with splendour to spare and glided past my window with the smiling countenance of the young and handsome. Matthew was full of hugs when I arrived at his house, just north of Bristol. Shelley (Matt's mom) was in the lounge and Mark (her fella) was upstairs in the bathroom. He came downstairs in a cheery enough manner, but looked oddly tired and pouchy. Pleasant aromas had wafted from the bathroom as he had carried out his ablutions, but his freshen up had failed and he looked like his face had been sat on by a gibbon. Mind you, I hadn't even washed or brushed my teeth yet, so I was one to talk.

I drove the two of us back to mine, Matt chattering like a magpie the whole way. We played a few games on my X-box once home and I also asked him to sort me out his 'very best, slimmed down version of the things I really, really want for Christmas' wish list. The finished product still carried enough financial clout to make Richard Branson duck for cover. Matt also did me a 'favourite foods' list at my request, so that he no longer has to exist on noodles, cucumber and rolo chocolate mousse whilst in my company.

We went out to feed Connie the donkey and Paxton the goat in the afternoon. Golly, it was cold outside. They seem to be best buddies, so I was surprised to find Connie standing alone in the field outside of her pen. Connie enjoyed double the fuss and attention (not to mention chopped apple) but there was still no sign of Paxton. Since he can be a surly bugger, who has attempted to skewer my groin on a number of occasions, I wasn't too bothered at first but we had a look for him across the paddock anyway. we hunted all over and then extended the search down a wooded slope to the river, but still no Paxton. There was just a torpid fisherman. I uneasily began to suspect that he'd met his demise somewhere. I was aware that my neighbour, Mick, had armed himself with a large branch after also coming under attack from the irascible Paxton. My brother had named this the ' Mick Stick' and I now contemplated whether Paxton had been brained with the Mick Stick. we finally went to check out the goat living quarters and called out his name as we approached. Paxton appeared with an alacrity that suggested he knew we carried food for him. It was so cold out, I guess that he had just decided to stay indoors, snuggle in the hay, perhaps read a book. Paxton had a look in his eyes that seemed to say, "Yeah - the stupid donkey still went out to chew frosted grass and get hoofbite, whatever, - that's why you refer to dumb humans as asses, 'cuz this dude IS dumb!"

I had to take the wee man home again at half-eight and got back myself at eleven. This was after driving hypnotically along dark roads that swirled with freezing fog, which reflected my headlights back at me so that visibility became, at times, hazardous. I fell asleep on the sofa whilst trying to watch a documentary on the 'Blackout Ripper' of the second world war. I awoke at one a.m. with a cricked neck and a saliva pool spreading near my shoulder. I went to bed, to be subjected to strange, fractured dreams.

The alarm woke me yesterday morning at six-fifteen It was hellish cold outside (contradiction in terms) and it took me ten minutes to defrost the car. I had a twelve hour day at work, which turned into a thirteen and a half hour one. It was not the smoothest of shifts; Mrs DG has a cold and was grouchy, bordering on murderous. Mr PA was brought back early from social leave by a disgruntled partner, as she had not been supplied with enough of his medication and the staff nurse on duty hadn't checked the amounts before he'd gone (not good - I had to apologise profusely on behalf of the unit). The personal monies were in disarray and didn't add up correctly, two people cancelled shifts (one at short notice - always an ulcer cultivator), it was the monthly changeover for medication (which involves labelling unused meds for disposal - a tiresome task best described by weeping) and the unit phone became rebellious and refused to accept incoming calls from increasingly irate family members and partners of our residents. I had to stay late to write up my daily reports and finally escaped one and a half hours later than I should have, then to spend another ten minutes patiently defrosting the car before the half hour drive home in numbed state.

I tell ya - gin and tonic over ice never tasted so good! I stopped up 'til about one a.m. last night. Slept well, too, and now have the pleasing notion that I'm not back to work for three days. Just have to start my christmas shopping now. Goody gumdrops.