The last two Friday 13th's have been bad luck for me. The first of the two, my mum, mams (my grandmother) and I were on a plane back from Lanzarote. Flight went fine, but driving home through country lanes, mum's headlights' kept turning off. Scary, but the car journey went fine all the same, and we got home about 3am.

The farm house has an outer door, a porch and an inner door. Mum had left the inner door unlocked, and didn't have a key for it, so when we discovered it locked, we were a bit put out.

My dad had been down to see to the dogs, and locked both doors after him.

One window was open in the house - my mum's bedroom window, open less than an inch, and on the latch.

I had to get the ladder out of the wood shed, climb up to the window, battle with it for a few minutes to squeeze my fingers through the gap, and force the latch up.

You know windows with the big pane of glass at the bottom, and two small opening windows at the top? It was one of those, the left hand one.

After about half an hour I managed to force myself through, after taking off my New Rock boots so I could stand as close to the window as possible, and opening the right hand one so I could stick my arm out of it, and against the wall for leverage.

Not fun!


This friday 13th was a little less exhausting; Stewart turned the TV on, only for it to make some godawful noises at him, and emit blue sparks from the button panel. It's now quite dead, and neither of us can afford a new one at the moment.