But this week I got some post addressed to him which really irritated me. The story started just weeks after he was made redundant in 2009. He got cold-called by a financial adviser offering advice on investing his lump-sum redundancy payment, and agreed that they should send him some initial bumf on what they had to offer. I was unhappy though. We were, and indeed I still am, subscribed to the Telephone Preference Service, which is meant to stop all uk-based cold calls, with threats of heavy fines for transgressors. I firmly believe that reputable companies should abide by the TPS rules, and refuse to deal with anyone who doesn’t. And how did they know that Chris had a lump sum anyway? They claimed it was a complete coincidence, but I was suspicious. I did some searches on the Internet, and came up with pages and pages of people complaining about sharp practices from this particular firm. I strongly advised him to have nothing further to do with them. Anyway, his lump sum was far too small for us to need professional advice on how to deal with it.

Everything went quiet until this week, when he got a letter from a company I’d never heard of, Towry, inviting him to a seminar in Worcester on “Wealth Preservation in Taxing Times”. This included advice on inheritance tax planning, intestacy, wills, and powers of attorney. I did some digging, and it seems that Towry bought up the previous IFA company, and also have a load of people complaining about their sharp practices – including the Financial Services Authority who have fined them nearly half a million pounds for “providing incorrect information”. I saw red and scrawled over their invitation “It’s a bit bloody late for this. He’s DEAD. Remove his name from your mailing list forthwith”. I then took great delight in sending it back to them in their own reply-paid first class envelope. I sincerely hope that’s the last I hear from them.

There were four of us travelling together, and we arrived at the hotel on Tuesday evening tired and hungry after a two hour drive. But the hotel restaurant couldn’t even give us a table for at least half an hour, let alone feed us in that time, as they had a number of large parties in. Who would have thought that so many people would want to go to a service station for their Christmas party? We weren’t prepared to wait, so walked to the other side of the large petrol station to the Harvester that was also part of the same services area. They were also quite busy, but were able to seat us all straight away.

The food was what you would expect from a Harvester grill. Nothing special, but mostly acceptable – though I did have to send my chicken back as it was under-cooked. But what really shocked us all was that every single item on the menu had its calorie count printed next to it. My potato skins starter was 300 calories. The main courses ranged from 290 calories for the grilled chicken up to a whopping 1280 calories for the rack of ribs. Plus you had to choose a type of potato (chips, mashed, or boiled, each with their calorie count labelled) and help yourself to a bowl of salad. Typical calorific values of a salad bowl were given, together with the contribution from each of the dressings. They even gave the calorie count of the drinks,though I deliberately didn’t look to see whether my glass of wine was more or less sinful than my colleague’s beer.

I’m sure that this approach has been taken by the Harvester to try to give the customers information to make healthy choices. But it seriously back-fired on all of us. We were out for a meal at the end of a long day and before a particularly challenging meeting the next day. We wanted to relax. None of us was on a diet, nor needed to be,and we were not interested in the calorie count of our meals. We asked for a dessert menu, and I think that at least three of us would probably have had a dessert. Except that each of them was labelled with their calorie count, ranging from 290 for a skewer of fruit, up to 720 or more for a sundae. And it was extremely off- putting! I went so far as to ask the waitress for a menu that didn’t have the calories on it, but she didn’t have one. So all four of us turned down a dessert, as we felt we couldn’t justify 720 empty calories! I think that if I was a shareholder in the Harvester chain I would demand a rethink on this policy, as it is clearly eroding profits…….

So I felt it was a real shame when she retired last autumn and was not replaced – too expensive I suspect. Instead, we have a remotely-managed service which sends out jolly one-size-fits-all emails. This month’s was a particularly choice one about stress awareness. I quote:

Did you know?  A hug can be good for your health. Hugging instigates an elevated release of oxytocin which researchers have shown is associated with reduced levels of stress hormones, promotion of growth and healing and social bonding.

Well! What on earth am I supposed to do with that information? Especially in a work context? Instigate group hugs at the weekly team meetings? I can see the sexual harassment suits already – in fact I’d probably launch one myself!

I am well aware that I am considerably under-hugged, but now that my husband is dead I don’t have a ready supplier of hugs to hand. I did get a year’s worth of hugs at the funeral, but that’s over a year ago now. However, I’m not a very tactile person, and neither are most of my friends. We’re all scientists and engineers for goodness sake; we don’t do touchy-feely! There is one exception – an old college friend of Christopher’s – who has the most comprehensive bear-hug I’ve ever come across, and I take full advantage of it when I see her. But otherwise, that so-called advice is useless to me, and (I suspect) to the large numbers of single scientists with whom I work. In fact, it’s worse than useless – it’s actively upsetting, as it reminds me of what I’ve lost.

Would you like to guess who was the corporation behind this insensitive and patronising newsletter? It was AXA ICAS Healthcare. AXA really do seem to be doing their level best to annoy me with their email communications recently!

AXA, or at least someone purporting to be AXA, sent an unsolicited email over the weekend to one of Christopher’s email addresses that hasn’t been used for two years. In it they said that my home insurance was about to expire, and to renew it I should click on a link within the email (which when I hovered my mouse over it was a very long link with lots of hexadecimal in it), answer some security questions and pay online. It’s true that my house insurance is due to expire, and indeed I’ve had another of those spooky reminders from Chris telling me to do something about it. But that email, although probably genuine, had all the signs of a classical phishing attack. All it would take would be for someone to hack the confused.com database, and they’d have a full picture of who I was,where I lived and when my various insurances were due for renewal.

So I phoned AXA up on the number in my policy details and asked them how stupid did they think I was? It’s an absolute first principle of cybersecurity never ever to click on a link in an unsolicited mail and then enter your security details or credit card number! It turns out that AXA have unilaterally moved my insurance policy to a web-only service, no doubt to keep costs down. I’ve no particular problem with that in itself – but they need to write to me to tell me, so that I know it’s genuine.  An email is not secure enough. Apparently they have written a letter telling me how to log on to the AXA website – but haven’t actually sent it out yet, so the email of course arrived days in advance.

I told the chap on the phone that AXA was training people to respond to phishing attacks, and that their behaviour was completely unacceptable. He seemed completely unaware of the basic principles of cybersecurity and struggled to grasp why I wouldn’t want to click on a link in an email that they had sent me. The concept that it might not have been them, but rather someone impersonating them, seemed completely alien to him! I have got him to promise that he would raise the matter with his management, but I have little hope that they will listen.

The telephone land-line was, like all our utilities, in Christopher’s name. So this time last year I spoke to BT, explained that he was dead, and got it moved into my name. So far, so good – no dramas, and all the paper bills have been correctly addressed to me since.

But at some point over the years, Chris must have signed up online to bt.com. That did not transfer over to me when I notified BT of his death, even though it is attached to the same phone number, account number and address. He (or rather, his email account) keeps getting emails from BT,  telling him that his bill is available to look at online.

This time last week, I’d finally had enough. I filled in a web-based complaint form, giving them all my details and saying “I told you a year ago that my husband Christopher Booth had died. You changed the account to my name – at least for paper bills. But you have not updated the online account. You are still sending emails addressed “Dear Christopher” and the mybt account is still in his name. This is extremely upsetting. Please change it ALL to my name.”

To give them their due, they got back to me within two days. But the reply was distinctly less than helpful – it boiled down to “I need to advise you that I cannot change the name on your on line account. Only the account holder can make these changes to their on line account.”

You can guess what that means, can’t you? Yes, I had to log in as Christopher with his username and password. The username was straightforward, but of course I didn’t have a clue about the password. Funny that. Anyone would think that as he was dead it might be difficult for me to actually ask him – but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to BT. So I had to get the password reset – which involved answering a security question which Christopher had set up. Fortunately he’d chosen one to which I knew the answer – so it wasn’t even particularly secure. If it had been something more obscure I’d not have been able to do so.

A year ago, I accepted these nuisances as just part of the general crap one has to deal with when one is bereaved. But I’m not feeling so charitable now. I think its absolutely unforgivable that major companies have such appalling procedures in place to deal with the death of one of their customers. The online stuff is the worst – they really don’t seem to have thought through the ramifications of passwords and so-called security questions when the account holder is no longer around to answer them. I at least am self-confident (some might even say bolshie) enough to make a fuss. But I feel very sorry for more vulnerable people who have to deal with all this extra aggravation at an already extremely difficult time.

So I’ve been rather narked that all the bills I’ve had from them since have been addressed to “The executors of Mr C Booth”, rather than to me personally.  I got another bill from them today and I’m afraid I snapped. I phoned them up, and established who I was – they clearly had my name on their computer against the account number. I told them that they clearly know that I’m a widow, and I know perfectly well that I’m a widow, but why do they have to keep reminding me with every bill? It is getting annoying and upsetting. Please would they change the account immediately to be in my name.

At that point I was put on hold for quite a long time while the telephone operator tried to work out how to deal with my request, which she acknowledged was entirely reasonable. Apparently, it is their practice to mark the account as run by the executors, and do not have a means to easily transfer it into a new name. I said that it was entirely possible that I’d be living here for years, and that their position, whilst understandable in the short term, was entirely unacceptable in the long term. I didn’t get as far as threatening to move suppliers, but that would clearly be the next step.

The operator assured me that she would deal with it, and get it sorted out to my satisfaction, so I have left it with her for now. If the next bill is still addressed to Christopher’s executors rather than to me, then I shall really lose my temper and transfer my business to a competitor.

“US   S; UK   S; DE   S; FR  M”

i.e. what will pass as small in the US, UK and Germany is considered a lard-assy medium by the svelte French!  I’m all in favour of companies selling internationally, but not at the expense of insulting their core clientele. Huh! I was definitely not impressed.

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Apparently people are expected to go through all five stages of grief so that they can come out the other side. Although there is small print saying basically “your mileage may vary”, the whole book reads to me as though it is trying to superimpose a standard pattern on what to me is a very individual situation.

I have to say that I do not recognise much of their canonical pattern in my own situation. I’m not in denial, am not angry at the situation and certainly am not trying to bargain with fate. I know perfectly well what has happened, that no one is to blame, and that it’s just one of those things that happen all too often.  Depression however I do recognise – I’ve been there since Chris was diagnosed two days before Christmas last year and still am. I don’t agree with the word “Acceptance” either for the final stage. “Accommodation” better fits what I aspire to – finding a way of living without him without forgetting what we meant to eachother.

I’ve always been wary of “one size fits all” self-help books, and reading this one hasn’t changed my opinion of the genre. I think I’ll just muddle on as best I can without trying to conform my feelings to some external regimented pattern.

The chemotherapy patients’ waiting room was quite a bit smaller, and its walls were lined with chairs, leaving a gap in the middle for a table that usually held a basket full of biscuits, and some more magazines. The atmosphere tended most weeks to be very convivial. We would all ask each other how we were getting on, receiving congratulations or sympathy dependent on our answers. In the corner was a kettle, and tea- and coffee-making facilities. For something that had the prospect of being so grim as receiving chemotherapy, it was really quite a happy place.

Two weeks ago, that all changed. In an effort to increase the size of the treatment area, our waiting room was converted into a haematology treatment room, all the chairs were moved from our waiting room into the main one, and in order to squeeze them all in, the chairs were rearranged into tightly spaced rows, all facing the receptionist, as though she were on a stage. In fact, that was exactly how she felt about it, and has since lowered her chair so that she doesn’t feel stared at by all the waiting patients. I do feel sorry for her.

But most of all, I feel sorry for all the patients. Being in rows, all facing the same way has removed all sense of conviviality. It’s really hard for people to talk to each other, and if you feel the need to get up and wander around, perhaps to ease an aching back, it’s now a lot more difficult. It seems such a shame to have thrown away all the benefits that the old arrangement had. I can see that there are clinical and financial benefits in having a larger treatment area, but all the same, it’s really tough on those of us who have lost out. And I include the haematology patients in that group too.

Although our National Health Service gives us medical care that is free at the point of use, and I am extremely impressed with the medical staff both their behaviour and their attitude, there can come the occasional time when resource limitations really bite. This is definitely one of those times.

I’ve just written to my MP telling them why I am concerned that the Digital Economy Bill could be rushed through without a full Parliamentary debate. Will you write to your MP too and tell them why the government shouldn’t rush through these draconian laws. It only takes two minutes. Or you can take a little longer and add a personal touch your letter to your MP, as I did.

Thank you.