We were recently inspired to get a breadmaker. A few years ago Tony and I went through a brief phase of making bread by hand. But then we gave in and got the milkman to deliver rather good loaves instead. However, we've recently eaten very tasty bread from other people's breadmakers and so I thought we'd give it a go.

I did the research at Which? and ordered the Panasonic brand of breadmaker that has consistently come up as a best buy (current model SD 255). Amazon delivered it fairly quickly and I made bread with it for Thursday and Friday mornings. These have disappeared within the day as they are just fantastic. We use wholemeal flour and our own loaves were always somewhat dense. The breadmaker loaves are properly risen, tasty, and obviously far less effort (3-4 minutes loading it up and programming it, a few seconds to take the loaf out in the morning). I also really like being able to know exactly what's in the loaf - we can substitute olive or sunflower oil for butter, for example, and know that we can offer it to the dairy-intolerant. There is a special attachment and program for rye bread, and a series of recipes for gluten-free loaves, which I would like to try out.

We currently spend 3 pounds a week on loaves from the milkman, which I am about to cancel, and the breadmaker cost 90 pounds. For my own fun I will be tracking how long it takes to pay off completely (because ingredients aren't free) but already the convenience and control are making it a winner, not to mention that the bread is even better.

Tony knows how to make me happy. He stopped off on the way home from work yesterday and bought me flours.

On Thursday I went to work and spent as much as possible of the afternoon and evening lying down or at least with my feet up - this owed a lot to Jonny and to CBeebies and to Tony being willing to cancel going to the pub and come home to look after us. On Friday Charles has swimming class in Impington. In theory I can cycle to this. In practice there was no way I was cycling, but as he had just fallen asleep when I picked him up from the childminder, I let him sleep in the buggy and went by bus rather than use James's car. He woke up just as we arrived, having had something like an hour's nap.

We just missed a bus on the way back. No problem, thought I, this is an every-10-minutes service. 15 minutes later a bus clogged with schoolchildren sailed past without stopping. 30 minutes after that, 2 buses came along leapfrogging each other. Charles had eaten all his post-swim snack and I was rapidly running out of songs to sing to keep him distracted from how bored and cold he was. At least there was a bus shelter and it had a seat.

We got home about 4:30 and I had another afternoon/evening of sitting on the sofa or lying on the bed. I fell asleep with Charles around 9:30pm and slept through until nearly 8am, with a couple of brief wakings to feed crying hungry toddler.

We have no plans this weekend so I am going to spend as much of it as possible in bed with books, in hopes that this will help my body deal with whatever tiredness/illness issues it has, and the books will distract me from the urge to get up and Do Many Things. Tony is primed for toddler-wrangling. I am unimpressed by the arrival of a small cough today, though it feeds my theory that among the stresses leading to the recent bout of migraines is the need to fight off the various bugs brought to the office by over-keen colleagues who won't take sick leave unless they are nearly dead.

In any case, I am finding my off-switch this weekend. I'm not always very good at that, and pay for it with the safety-valve alarm of migraines. 3 in a week is a Very Loud Alarm indeed.