Weekend Update

A very kind neighbour left some garden produce in the porch yesterday morning, pretty sure it was Tina, thank you so much! Vivien is spending the weekend with Ray and I'm here on cat watch duties. The BT Smart Hub 6 arrived!!!!! It married up to the iMac extremely quickly so that was impressive, BUT I STILL CAN'T SEND EMAILS! Phoned BT today, but all their systems were down so they couldn't help me – will try again tomorrow.

What a miserable day today, I was going out birding to cheer myself up, but the weather was atrocious – rain all day. Didn't achieve much at all. Hand washed Lucy's blouse and cardigan for the funeral, dried over electric radiator, mended button and ironed later for her. Kept the cat fed, kept me fed and basically slept all day – feel very low, still can't believe mother has died. I drove back to Holme from King's Lynn yesterday and was sobbing all the way home, when I realised I couldn't ring mother to tell her any bird news anymore – she was always good at telling me what birds were going to turn up and generally she was correct – I will miss this so much. There is now a massive void in my life that will never be filled and its no good anyone telling me that 'time will' heal because that's b*llocks!!!

Had a lovely surprise visit from one of our old family friends Malcolm W. who popped in for a short while this afternoon, which was really nice. I only noticed today that mother's last entry on her calender in the kitchen was about the 'beautifully marked juvenile Green Woodpecker' that she had watched drinking from one of the bird pools by the bird table on Friday 20th July – I clearly remember her telling me about this as I had missed it! I can't come to terms with the fact that she was sitting in her armchair by the window, fully alert and able to watch the birds, then have a stomach drain six days later on 26th July and then die on the 7th August – gone far too soon. The drain was supposed to make her feel better – I personally think it speeded up her death, but then it could have been worse, her pain might have been prolonged it she had not had the drain, who knows, we never will. I am dreading the funeral, its getting close now, Thursday is scarily close.