Well, I don’t know about anyone else but I really hate these dark days we’re having.

Waking up on a morning and it’s still dark and it doesn’t get any brighter as the day goes along.

I think I suffer from ‘SAD’ - seasonal affective disorder. In January and February, I always start feeling a bit down. I don’t want to go out for my daily walk because it’s usually wet, cold and dark. Flipping miserable.

Lately I have given myself a right good boot up the backside. Over a few things, to be honest, but this moping about, feeling sorry for myself needed a proper sorting out before it got out of hand, and as I no longer have my mum to do it then I had to be the woman for the job.

As I’m sure you can imagine, sorting me out isn’t an easy job. Common sense had to convince stubborn myself that I had to stop this!

Easier said than done, as I can even argue with myself. But, in the end common sense won. I explained to Pete that I needed to start going out for walks again. He wasn’t hard to convince and soon had his coat, hat, gloves, sensible boots and scarf on.

I looked on absolutely bewildered by just how much clothing he had on, and just how quickly he’d got himself geared up.

I slowly put on my raincoat and trainers. My nice flowery summer trainers. The frown lines on his forehead deepened, but bless him, he said nothing.

We set off walking our usual way, down Cudworth up towards Lunn Road, but then I had a giddy moment and suggested that we go down the side of the Pinfold pub and over the fields.

I was out now and nothing was going to stop me - this woman was on a mission.

Well as you may have now guessed, after all the rain we’ve had, it was never going to end well, was it? I honestly think that if the half a brain I actually have worked properly I’d be okay.

But it doesn’t, and for whatever reason, Pete didn’t say a word but just walked along in his sensible walking shoes. I would never have admitted it to Pete but as soon as I saw the muddy, wet path I knew, I just knew it was a bad idea, but stubborn me just carried on.

I slipped and slid down that path, with shouts of ‘whoa’ and ‘arrrrrh’ as I frantically waved my arms about like they were propellers as I tried to keep myself from falling. I could hear the response of ‘are you alright?’ coming from Mr Sensible Shoes as he continued walking along.

It wasn’t until I slipped and put my foot into a deep puddle that Mr Sensible Shoes stopped and turned around. He didn’t need to say anything, his face said it all as the muddy water completely covered my now not-so-summery trainers, but he did.

“Oh heck! Who would have thought?”

I suppose in his favour he did help me out of the muddy puddle. But I could see him in front of me laughing, his shoulders were moving up and down as I squelched my way along.

And then I heard him singing ‘mud, mud, glorious mud, there’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood’.

Well, my blood was boiling! We even reached a point where the field was completely waterlogged. The thought of having to go back put the fear of God into me.

Luckily, we found another path, which was bad, but not as bad. I squelched my way up Cudworth, trying to avoid people as much as I could.

Whilst Mr Sensible Shoes briskly walked along with greetings to everyone he saw. And what lesson did I learn from it? To wear sensible shoes? Not to walk down the fields when its muddy? No, no, no, the lesson was not to go out with Mr Sensible Shoes ever again!