Anyway, I was in work earlier than usual, logged on to my computer and looked at my on-line calendar to see what meetings people had booked for me while I was off. It was then that I made the horrid discovery. I had booked Tuesday off as annual leave and forgotten all about it! With all the stress of meetings and milestones before Christmas, I had forgotten to synchronise my work and home diaries, and the booked leave hadn’t made it into my 2012 diary.  There was no point in going home at that stage – since I was in work I might as well make the most of it and do something useful. Oh I was cross with myself!

My resolutions/plans for the coming year, in no particular order, include

• Fixing the leak in the porch roof, which drips every time it rains
• Getting the kitchen decorated
• Starting to plant some interesting climbers on the terraces in the garden
• Increasing my hours at work – but in a sustainable way, so that I avoid an exhaustion-triggered collapse
• Scattering some more of Christopher’s ashes somewhere interesting
• Keeping on blogging

On that last point. Christopher and I originally started this blog as an account of living with (and subsequently dying from) cancer. I then kept it up as a diary of coming to terms with being widowed, and putting my life back together again. My sister tells me that it now reads like a blog about maintaining and renovating an old house, and there is certainly that aspect to it too – though I think that’s partly a coping mechanism / displacement activity on my part. I can’t bring Chris back, but I can make this house more comfortable.

I find blogging helps me – as indeed it helped Chris. And I keep going with it, even though it’s sometimes an effort, because I can see from the stats that people read it, and some of you comment. That makes it all worthwhile. So please do keep on reading and commenting – it is really helpful to me even if it doesn’t seem so to you!

It should also have been my last day in work, as opposed to at work, but when I woke up yesterday morning, it was still snowing heavily and had clearly been doing so for most of the night. The roads were clear, but my drive wasn’t. There is a short but very steep section of drive between my garage and the main road which is lethal when it gets covered in snow and ice. So I decided that, rather than spending my limited energy on digging out the car and shoveling the drive, it would make much more sense to work on the report from home. Thankfully broadband makes that feasible.

By the time I’d spent all morning and half the afternoon wrangling with M$ Word and sent the report off to the customer I was pretty much drained. I know I’ve been overdoing it somewhat recently – that’s been a deliberate decision taken with my eyes open – and I was aiming to pace  myself to get to the end of the year.  I did so, with about an hour to spare it felt like, but then the cumulative efforts of the last few months hit me and I felt absolutely shattered.

The snow was still on the car and drive, as it hadn’t thawed as quickly as I had expected. I had virtually no food in the house, as I’d been away on business much of the week and hadn’t had time to go shopping. And I really couldn’t face going out.  So I decided that the best thing to do was to phone out for a Chinese takeaway to be delivered.  That’s actually the first time since before Christopher died that I’ve totally abdicated on the cooking front, and phoned out for food. It really does feel like giving in, but it’s good to know that it’s there as an option.

There was more snow over night, though apparently very localised. I made the effort to go out shopping this afternoon, and there was no snow at all on the other side of the hill. My car was very obvious in Waitrose car park – the only one with an inch and a half of snow on the roof! It’s good to have some supplies in again in case the snow persists.

But sometimes, despite me thinking that I’m coping, something comes along and knocks me for six. And it’s often something little that takes me by surprise and shows me that I’m not as tough as I try to make out. Today, for example, I decided to make a start writing my Christmas cards. But when I went through my address book to write the envelopes, I kept coming across names and addresses in Christopher’s handwriting. Ouch! That really hurt. So I’m afraid I’ve abandoned writing my Christmas cards for now. I’ll try again tomorrow, but it might have to be a much curtailed list this year.

So I was making a number of phone calls this morning,  and decided it was about time I did some housekeeping on the phone, and delete numbers that I no longer need. My late father-in-law is one such; I can’t imagine needing to phone there again now. But I also took the opportunity to delete a load of numbers I used regularly when Christopher was ill – including the 24 hour Chemotherapy hotline at Cheltenham hospital, the Worcester Royal Hospital switchboard, and the hospice reception. I sincerely hope I don’t need to use any of those again in a hurry. And I really don’t need to keep them hanging around in my phone, reminding me of last year every time I scroll through the address book looking for a number.

Since he died I have had to face up to the unwelcome fact that my fringe is very fast-growing, and if I don’t do something about it, it soon gets too long and gets into my eyes. I’ve tried cutting it myself, but that was very unsatisfactory. I did think about asking my mother to have a go at it when I’ve been visiting my parents, but I’m still deeply traumatised by her efforts at trimming my fringe when I was a child! There are photos of me aged about seven with the most amazingly crooked fringe, and I really don’t want to be reminded of that……..

But then I discovered that the hairdressers that I have been going to for the past fifteen years or more are very happy to see their regular customers in between formal haircuts, and trim their fringe for free, without an appointment, just as long as one of the hairdressers has a few minutes free! I popped in last Friday afternoon and it was done – quickly, professionally and with the minimum of fuss. So all those years of being a skinflint and getting Chris to cut my fringe were completely unnecessary!

I got through the week on a combination of leftovers (from last weekend’s larger than otherwise strictly necessary lamb joint), storecupboard basics and improvisation, plus buying two emergency pints of milk from the canteen at work. It was all going well until lunch time yesterday. I’ve got a stinking cold, so decided to work from home yesterday rather than spread my germs around the open plan office. From a work point of view that was a good call, and I got a lot done. But at lunch time I realised that, since I hadn’t expected last weekend to be at home on Friday, I hadn’t planned ahead and got any ingredients for lunch. I was reduced to raiding the fridge for any odds and ends of left-overs (half a yellow pepper, a slice of ham, a tomato and a few green beans) which I could put in a frying pan with a couple of eggs and call an omelette.

I had intended to do a big shop today to restock the fridge, which was very nearly empty. But I didn’t get to Waitrose until nearly 5pm today (I’d been to a matinée at the theatre. But a review of the play will have to wait until tomorrow. Waitrose reopening is much more important!) and the store was absolutely heaving. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy, except perhaps just before Christmas. I was too tired and hungry to have the patience to do a big shop, especially since it would require hunting for for each and every thing and hence take much longer than it should.  So I just bought the basics, enough to get me through the weekend, and I’ll do a proper restocking exercise later in the week when it’s less busy.

The other traders are really worried about the knock-on effects. On the one hand, the butcher & greengrocer may get extra trade, but on the other hand it could well be that the punters will desert Malvern entirely all week if they can’t park at Waitrose. The butcher told me that he doesn’t know whether to order extra supplies, or nothing at all – it’s very uncertain for them.

I did a big shop yesterday to stock up in advance of a Waitrose-free week. I did my meat and veg shop first at the butchers and greengrocers respectively – and it was just as well that I did. By the time I got to Waitrose mid-afternoon, the shelves were practically bare! I think it was a combination of people panic-buying and the store deliberately running perishable supplies down in advance of the closure. There was no meat of any kind other than bacon joints, practically the only vegetables left were carrots and cauliflowers, and the dairy aisle was almost empty. The staff were frantically “facing-up” by pushing the remaining items to the front of the shelves, but that couldn’t disguise the fact that there was hardly anything fresh left. There were plenty of dry goods and tins available, but that was about it.

Oh well. It’s only for a week, and in the grand scheme of things it’s hardly a disaster.

What that means in practice is that, over the past two weeks, I’ve been getting a little flurry of reminders from beyond the grave: “sort out car insurance”, “empty septic tank” (I’ve already done that one!), “arrange boiler service”. It’s nice in a way that he’s still helping me by reminding me to do things – but also rather upsetting.