After surviving a whole houseful of kids for the weekend, it seems that someone’s turned down the volume. As you probably know, #1 and #2 have been eagerly anticipating this weekend’s visit of their cousins, the fleas. J&A arrived very early on Saturday morning with their Grandad in tow, and from the moment they saw each other again, none of them stopped talking or laughing for one minute until they were fast asleep. Oh they had a ball though. Having not seen each other for the best part of a year, there was lots of catching up to be done: lots of Playstation to play, lots of football and cricket trash to talk and lots of rushing around and shouting too. We venerable adults sat in front of the fire reading the papers and drinking tea and coffee, watching as one child or another occasionally rushed past the window outside. They played golf, football and hide and seek; they played tag, they tickled, they wrestled, they had a pitched battle using stuffed toys as weapons, and had the best fun ever. Their bedroom was an explosion of toys, clothes, odd socks, duvets, Lego, Gameboys, sweet wrappers and pillows. For us, knowing we’d only got to put up with it for 24 hours, it was quite blissfully easy to sit back and watch them have fun.

We went out for dinner on Saturday night and had a really lovely meal (I had Thai fish cakes - they had mussels in and were very yummy - followed by a rather lovely beef Wellington with red wine sauce). The children were incredibly well behaved and the restaurant was fantastic. Unfortunately, as there were so many of us, both Hubby and I had to drive so no wine for us, but we made up for it when we got home and the kids were in bed by making frozen strawberry daiquiris. Since J&A had been up since some ungodly hour in order to catch their flight, they were all exhausted and after a bit of whispering and giggling, the last one was asleep by about 10.30, which is not bad going when it’s your first sleepover for many months.

On Sunday morning they all took it in turns to have a shower, covering the entire bathroom floor in water and bubbles, (Dad’s partner stumbled upon a naked #2 in the bathroom prompting him to screech ‘aarrggh, don’t look at my willy!!!’), before we had the biggest fry-up ever (eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, baked beans, black pudding..you name it), then it was time for one more mad round of hide and seek and a last game on the Wii (Grandad was rather good at tennis as it happens) before they were packed and ready to be whisked off to the airport again.

I tucked a somewhat breathless #2 in to his bed while he lamented the fact that the weekend had gone so fast: ‘it seems like I blinked, Mummy, and it was over’, but as Hubby and I sat down to a well deserved rest and a glass of wine, we agreed that this was the best form of entertaining: a mad, frantic rush of excitement, then it’s all over and back to normality. Kind of like speed dating without the romance, but with extra volume.

We woke this morning to the most beautiful view, and Hubby (ever the David Bailey) took this beautiful photo of the mist just settling below the trees beyond the bottom field.

I’ve been madly cleaning and hoovering in preparation for Dad and the fleas (pointless, really, because we all know they’re going to trash the place). In the process, I’ve managed to break the hoover and splash bleach on my new bath mat. I bloody hate cleaning. Hubby, trying to help I might add, then decided to empty out the ashes from the fire, and managed to coat everything in a fresh layer of soot and dust.

J the plumber/carpenter/whatever has been hard at work outside filling in the unfeasibly large hole (I really don’t want to kill my brother’s children - I’ve only got them for a day) and swearing at Holly, the dog from down the road, who keeps putting footprints in his fresh cement. In between times he’s been popping in for tea and biscuits, whilst giving us fascinating lessons on everything from Charlie Haughey to the Easter Rising, and much more besides.

Now I’m off to make bread rolls for tomorrow’s lunch, and also to quickly check all the traps, mindful of the fact that ‘eau de festering dead mouse’ isn’t quite as welcoming as the scent of freshly baked bread.

Right, a bit of culture for you today. I have been reliably informed by J that it’s St Brigid’s day. So I did a bit of asking around (mostly to the builders, who love nothing more than an excuse to chat over a cup of tea), and uncovered a few facts.

As I understand it (she says hastily in case she unintentionally offends someone) St Brigid seems to be another patron saint of Ireland, possibly slightly less well known than St Patrick. She was born in Dundalk (local lass then) and was, again as far as I can gather, a rather top girl - renowned for her kindness to children and animals, and rather wily and clever in outwitting the odd chieftain or two in her time. Apparently when wanting land to establish her convent, it was agreed that St Brigid (one of the first lateral thinkers) could have as much land as her cloak would cover. When she flapped out her cloak and placed it on the ground it spread out to cover the entire county of Kildare (or 100 acres, depending on who you ask). One website even goes so far as to say that she was ‘imbued with a Celtic sense of hospitality…reputed to be the best baker of bread and brewer of mead in Ireland and enjoyed a drink as much as the next person’ so she gets my vote.

St Brigid’s day also seems to herald the start of Spring, never a bad thing on a grim February morning, and as St Brigid is known as the ‘women’s saint of Ireland’, is supposed to be a day of appreciation for the (unpaid) work us women do - a kind of ‘put your feet up’ day for women.

So, coincidentally entering into the spirit of things, I took myself off for a bit of pampering and had my hair done. This being the first time since the ‘HOLY SH*T, IT COST HOW MUCH?!’ debacle of the salon in the posh marina town (yes, that was August - can you believe that?), I was understandably apprehensive. This time, however, I deliberately chose a nice, but not too desperately expensive-looking salon in the local shopping centre, and booked in with the bubbly Sinead. Not having been ‘done’ for over five months, I was looking a bit shabby, but Sinead was very nice and not at all sniffy. We settled on some nice golden highlights, interspersed with some darker ones for ‘texture’ (don’t ask). And as she thought the length suited me (more compliments - I was positively basking in them by now), she just nipped off the ends. An expert blow-dry later, I walked out feeling like Heather Locklear (in her pre-Motley Crue days), happy in the knowledge that it was nearly half my last salon bill…phew.

Feeling positively miserly, I popped into J C Penney’s for a quick splurge and emerged victorious with two sweaters with ‘a touch of cashmere’ , some bedlinen for the fleas and a collection of underwear in various shades of pink to satisfy my inner Jordan. There…stylish and thrifty, moi.