Daughter finally went back to school this week, although we spent two hours the night before trying to find her school shoes.

They seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth.

"They are definitely not in my bedroom," she said, after a half-hour search.

We checked the cupboard under the stairs in case we had thrown them in there to stop the dog eating them. We checked my ward-robe. We checked the greenhouse, although I wasn't too hopeful about finding them there, but then again you never know.

We phoned a few school friends' houses to see if they'd been left there at the end of last term by mistake. Tried her nan's as well without any success.

We eventually found them in the least expected place - correctly put away in the canvas shoe caddy in her wardrobe. I wasn't surprised she hadn't found them earlier.

It's such an unusual occurrence for anything in our house to be where it's supposed to be, this had to be a first.

The dog is in disgrace after running away when chased by a bigger dog in the park last week.

We had just taken him off the lead so he could play with a friend when a big black whippet started chasing him.

I think it only wanted to play but Sam is not a brave dog, as you know.

He took one look at his aggressor and turned tail and ran, straight across the junction at the bottom of Wilson Avenue through all the traffic. Luckily he escaped injury and made it home in one piece.

Apart from chasing the dog through traffic, it's been a fairly quiet week, although we did treat ourselves to a new music system.

Him indoors had been rooting through the attic and right at the back found his collection of ancient LPs and decided he needed something to play them on.

Our old microsystem didn't have a turntable and anyway, since last Christmas the CD player has only worked if you balance a half-full bottle of whisky on top of it to stop the lid opening by itself.

We decided it was a choice between either buying a new system or purchasing a new bottle of whisky and drinking half of it.

In the end we decided to protect our livers and went for the new music system rather than the Glenfiddich.

This means I have had the pleasure of listening to such gems as Nico, Patti Smith and Donovan interspersed with a bit of Carly Simon and Simon and Garfunkel.

We have done some intensive research and have decided most of these records only sound really, really good after you have drunk quite a lot of red wine.

So perhaps we should just have bought a new bottle of whisky in the first place.