2007 — 15 November: positively icy Thursday
I didn't have time to draft anything so far this (sunny) morning as the driving lesson (and the windscreen ice-clearing that preceded that) were upon me almost before I knew which end was up. I'm sleeping far better than I ever would have predicted, but I'm still going to bed at what many people would think is a ridiculously late hour. I should have thanked yet more people before the eyelids slammed shut. I was probably still updating the Mac OSX to 10.4.11 at the time!
Cards and messages of sympathy are very heart-warming, let me assure you. I even thanked the debt collection agency when I rang them today since they have promised to try to bang a few heads together over the still unpaid drugs bill from August. The DVLA wrote to Christa re the transfer of Her Yaris to me. Her (now cancelled) credit card is confirmed as having nothing currently owing. Her German relatives are doing their best to convey their sympathy in English (which cannot be easy for them). I feel almost as sorry for them as I do for myself, frankly. We all know, on a profound level, just what we've lost in Christa, believe me.
Thank you, to Cathy G for chatting with my neighbours. They were very taken with you last night. And, funnily enough, thank you to BBC Radio 3 for doing a lot (and I do mean a lot) of serious soul-soothing recently. I am battered and bruised, but I still seem to be intact.
Yet another new day
Time now (11:04) and I've already set up driving lessons for tomorrow, and Monday. The fierce concentration is exhausting (or the blood sugar level is into negative territory) but I am determined to do this. I've had my morning wobble (aka weep) and have now, as it were, "pulled my socks up". What a ludicrous phrase that is, by the way. Time for a cuppa, obviously.
Some sad, but needful phone calls later, and with delicious soup and jacket potato with interesting stuff on it (including soured cream) tucked away inside the tum, it's time (13:15) for an afternoon driving session. (I've allowed myself to be talked into letting some of the admin and paperwork side of "things" slide more into the hours of darkness — I did not take much persuading.) There will be a degree of further bay parking coming up, I'm thinking. Plus, a DVD of Harry Potter #5 has just been delivered, sadly too late to share with my Best Girl. You can't have everything in this life, it seems.
And nightfall falls again
Another 30 miles or more, plus some bay parking practice at the Hilliers Garden Centre (big advantages to having the use of a "blue badge" for parking). A phone call from a lawyer type chappie from Christa's bank — there's no problem in making me the executor (as Her 1977 will specified, but which, when we redrew them in 2002 to include Junior by name(!), we'd backed away from). And why? Well, a chap needs a project to keep himself busy, don't'cha think? Chicken hotpot supper at the bungalow — thanks again, Shelagh. An attempt to contact Brynja to thank her for the photos of Christa, and to tell her, in case she doesn't yet know... So many of our network, it turns out, are not yet fully in the habit of using this Interweb thing, so yet more phone calls.