We were doing maintenance stuff to get us through the next few December weeks. Side alley was nearly flooded by the clogging of hair from the bath with leaves from the garden, which was a really unpleasant mixture. Certain aspects of the house we didn’t pick up in a survey. Maybe moving that bathroom would have been clever after all, but you say that with hindsight kicking you rather hard. Our first architect plan was recommending all that but we decided to go with an entirely different scheme and until I started working again I had forgotten what it feels like to have a significant monthly pay packet which allows you to dream again a bit.

That said I do struggle with working too but my struggles can be to do with remoteness and email and text communication and my new nemesis, zoom. It’s not like being in a room and having visual clues as to the actual tone of the discussion. But neither is a WhatsApp conversation. That autism conversation keeps tickling at the back of my mind. At my current age I feel too old to have that one pinned down but I am lonely for female conversations at the moment, and it’s been something that helps me to find my life in perspective but I’m not getting that one much at the moment and it’s adding to my list of struggles.

We took on our dog and we love her but she also adds to my struggles. My maintenance task first thing was leaf collection. A lot of horrible things were hiding under the leaves, however, which led to a lot of mess on the grass and all over my wellingtons… The girls had not been venturing out to collect the dog waste and it made me so cross. Horrible November and cold December are not great for their enthusiasm (in fact this requirement has zero enthusiasm) and we need to investigate collector gadgets in the New Year. We spent today also collecting Christmas things and ordering the Christmas food from faraway farm shops. The girls don’t know what they missed out on but we were able to get some last-minute gifts. We also have other things to collect tomorrow from St Albans and to visit grandma who is in a new residential home.

So despite being in the garden I still haven’t planted those bulbs! It’s getting perilously close to the time the ground starts to freeze. And I’m looking forward to taking another LFT to ensure we are safe to visit!