Two days off coming up, not a moment too soon. Last week was exhausting. Even yesterday was tiring, and that was a day off. I haven't got a lot planned for my days off, hurrah!

Today I went for a great walk, over an hour of brisk healthy striding. The roads were thronging with other brisk walkers -- the cross-country footpaths are pretty much all shut down because of the foot and mouth outbreak. The Dalmeny estate is on a war footing: the main estate entrance and the estate farm entrance were covered in straw and guards had been posted to make sure visitors used the disinfectant footbath.

The more I learn about foot and mouth, the more baffled I am. I'd always thought it was a dread disease, on a par with leprosy or bubonic plague -- in fact it's been called a plague in headlines in A Certain Newspaper. But it turns out it's about as serious as a bout of the flu. If you leave the sick pigs and cows alone they get better. One writer said the wholesale slaughter was an economic thing: infected livestock lose condition & weight and aren't worth as much. And because it spreads so fast it's better to kill all the animals in an infected herd than risk gazillions more animals getting it and being worth less. Apparently.

The other thing, of course, is that you can vaccinate livestock against foot and mouth disease. But that costs money, and again, apparently it's cheaper to risk having to slaughter all your animals than to make sure they don't get sick in the first place.

Meanwhile, back in my disease-free habitat, Dougie and Bob are coming in a fortnight's time to do the floors. He reckons it will take two days: Saturday and Sunday. I have to go in to the warehouse tomorrow and make sure they've got all the right stuff, which they'll then deliver. In the week before Dougie arrives, I'll have to move as much furniture upstairs as possible. The windows blokes are coming on Thursday. If they fix the boards around the french doors then, I can sand and varnish them over the following few days, so they'll be finished before Dougie and Bob get stuck in.

I have fantasies of painting the livingroom before the floors are done, but I have to stamp them down. I would have to scrape off all the embossed wallpaper first, ghastly business, then no doubt plaster over various holes and cracks before painting, or put up lining paper. Just too complicated, messy, time-consuming and tiring. Same with the dining room. I've more or less decided on colours -- darkish green for the dining room, perhaps with dark red velvet curtains and a lightshade with some kind of crystals or sparkles; and my favourite pale adam green for the living room with white dotted muslin curtains. I'd like to recover the sofa and chairs in lighter shades too, cream and pink maybe.

This just in on the foreign wire:

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) – Passengers arriving at Prague’s Ruzyne airport from Britain and Ireland will in future be asked to clean their shoes on specially laid rugs to prevent the possible spread of hoof-and-mouse disease to the Czech Republic.

Hoof and mouse! It sounds so sweet. Please wipe your feet to avoid infecting Czech mice with your vile British disease.

I feel slightly guilty about this, but my life feels pretty normal. According to reports from the other side of the world, where I live is in the grip of apocalypse -- plague, blizzards, terrible accidents. You'd think I'd be suffering. But no. I was slightly annoyed by the fact that my newspaper wasn't delivered two days in a row, and the rubbish was collected a day late. Oh, and the deadlines at work have been moved forward. But that's it. Hardly chaotic.

Joking aside, it's very nerve-wracking for my farming friends -- there are two suspected cases of foot & mouth disease in Scotland, one in Dumfries and one in Grangemouth, near Edinburgh. There was one suspected case at a pig farm in Aberdeenshire, but it turned out to be frostbite. Yes, it's very, very cold in the north, and the poor pigs live outside. I was surprised that the virus can survive such intense cold, but apparently it thrives in winter conditions, it's heat that kills it, even sunlight. The last outbreak lasted from November to April.

The snow is still lying and a little more fell this morning. Just a powdery sprinkling, nothing serious. It's bitterly cold, so nothing is melting. Apparently the main road between Glasgow and Edinburgh is bordered by tall icy drifts. When I came in to work today the city looked magnificent: Arthur's Seat was brilliant white and bathed in sunshine, and the dark crags of the Castle looked dramatic silhouetted against it. I always get a thrill from the beauty of Edinburgh, even after 10 years.

Ten years ... good grief ... that fairly flew by. In fact it's nearly 11 years. Jings.

I dragged my sorry carcase to the gym today and took a little light exercise. I'm trying to get into running, with the eventual aim of jogging in the outdoors. For now what I do is brisk walking (on the treadmill) for a few minutes, then running for one minute, then go back to brisk walking. I am severely unfit due to joyfully embracing car ownership, so a minute's running is a much bigger achievement than you can imagine. There were other people in the gym, so it was an even braver deed. The good thing about the little village gym though is that the clientele aren't as scary as at the gyms I used to go to in town -- more baggy trackies and t-shirts, less lycra.