T Minus 22 hours 40 mins and counting...

No further developments of note to report.

The pineapples are nearly all gone and the raspberry leaf tea is now so strong you can stand a spoon up in it. Helen has been 'walking like an elephant' as instructed by the midwife and bouncing on her giant ball - the one we bought and inflated not the one she seems to have stuffed up her jumper. The world's hottest curry is being prepared by Uddin at the Bucks Tandoori for tonight - maybe that will make a difference. He seems more confident of that than I am.

I have been trying to get some of my admin done today. I have managed to tax the car, pay a couple of cheques in at the bank, pick up my shoes that were re-heeled before Christmas and collect some flea and worming solution for the puppies from the vets, but my mind has mostly been elsewhere. My attempts to get my VAT return done have amounted to no more than piling up all of the invoices which are now staring at me accusingly from the desk. I have done no work for a whole week (whooppee!) - the first time since skiing at the end of March and even then I took a couple of calls on the piste !

The sense of anticipation is dreadful, and not just for us, apparently. Friends keep phoning and e-mailing, purportedly to find out how we are, but in reality to check that they have not been missed out in the baby news round robin. If I do miss you out, please do not read anything adverse into it - it is possible that I will not be thinking clearly.

Part of me would like to be at the Walkers Stadium tomorrow afternoon to watch Norwich beat Leicester. We could just about get back in time to report for baby delivery duty at Stoke Mandeville at 7pm, but somehow I think that would be tempting fate too much. I hope they win. They seem to do better when I am not there at the moment, so perhaps staying away is a sound idea for more than one reason.

At least the space we are all watching is getting smaller, unlike Helen's tummy. I am going to take another photo of her tomorrow before we go to the hospital. Hopefully, she will let me publish it here.

Curry beckons....