This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

Christ, what a day. I know Mondays are meant to be screwed up, but yesterday takes the biscuit. The fickle finger of fate clearly passed over Castle Langridge with a vengeance.

1. Niamh woke up at 5am, feeling sick, and intermittently wassick.
2. A hole in a water pipe trashed our kitchen ceiling and took four hours and £125 to fix, said fix happening by the world's most useless plumber. It would have been better to have Mario and Luigi round doing the work.
3. We bought a wardrobe from Ikea that doesn't fit together. Some of the holes don't line up properly so you can put screws in. I don't understand this. Isn't it just as easy to drill the holes in the right place as it is the wrong place? Stuff you get for a low price always seems to have these hole alignment problems; if it's just a matter of tolerances on error at the factory, you'd think that once, just once, I might get one of the ones where they got it right, rather than one of the ones where they pushed the tolerances to the maximum.
4. The car broke down while driving (after it had a full service on Tuesday!) and we had to sit in it for an hour an wait for the AA to arrive, in the pouring rain.
5. Mam called: my grandad was taken into hospital after having either a heart attack or developing a blood clot in something vital. It's all a bit unclear, partially because all the action is happening in Ireland, and partialy because Mam is furious that her dad was taken in to hospital yesterday morning and no-one rang her to let her know for twelve hours.

I better be due some really good luck to make up for that day. You hear me, Dame Fortuna? The lottery, that'll do.