I’ve been asked what it’s like to work from home and how I started out. I thought about it and then remembered a draft I’d written for a Blog post before I got my office in the garden…actually writing it made me go out and get an office for the garden.

Summer 2009 So here, we have a constant chaos. I run my business online. The internet never stops…as a consequence neither do I.. Teenager is now on school holidays so she won’t need my laptop for a while, she has her own computer on which to finish writing her book and doesn’t need to go online. But Darling Husband has to register the birth, marriages and deaths of each and every one of his cattle. He hates doing it, he puts in the wrong pin number, fails to scroll down to his Holding number, jabs a finger at the screen and demands the teenager comes down from her Room to do it for him. “Can I go on CBeebies?” whines smallest scrumplet “Look, Bucket (an affection term the Teenager uses for her little sister – short for Fluff-bucket), I’m registering Daddy’s cattle, OK?” “Da-ad! Daddy my sister won’t let me go on CBeebies!” “Mum! Email!!” – Teenager “Mu-um!…E-MAIL!!” – Fluff-Bucket Me- can i read my email? Everyone else “NO!” Then in will walk Darling Husbands’ best friend… “Look at this on You-Tube!” Me…”Not now Uncle G, I do have work to do” Uncle G “No No…not now, this is much more important! Put the kettle on woman!” He’ll wheel the office chair away with whoever is sat in it and takes possession of the lap-top..click, click and there we all are, fascinated.

We’ll all stand mesmerised by his latest find on the internet, the favourite being binocular football and we’ll laugh helplessly at the video.

Then we’ll play it again and laugh at darling Husbands’ friend laughing…he is very, very funny. Apparently his work colleagues put the binoculars football on YouTube to watch him laugh! The milkman arrives and more nonsense is spouted while the kettle boils again. Meanwhile I have to take phone calls from clients outside so they can’t hear the wild laughter inside, does anyone else work under these conditions? I suspect not. I did ask my neighbour who regularly has v.important conference calls. She has a large office upstairs in her capacious house, down a long oak corridor, safe from any interruptions, or so she thought.. Only, I repeat, only when she is in conference of importance will her children sit outside the door howling about each other. Sick of this she dispatched them for a playday and settled down for her important call. Halfway through her husband walked into the hallway downstairs and yelled ‘Who left the fu**ing door open?’ He then slammed in hard enough to reach a ’6′ on the Richter Scale. Working from home isn’t always easy (sigh).