I’ve sometimes, indeed often, felt like my life over the past year since Chris died has been like wading through thigh-high treacle – extremely hard work, and achieving seemingly infinitesimal forward momentum. But now, if I feel like that, I can simply look out of my kitchen or bedroom windows and see something tangible that [...]
Ever since Chris was first diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I had an “acute stress reaction” to the situation (for which read “pretty comprehensive breakdown”), I’ve been working part time. Initially, this was an informal arrangement, and I took a mixture of leave and sick-leave to cover the times I was unable to work. However, [...]
Sorry for the break in transmission over the past week. I’ve just got back today from a week’s holiday in Croatia. I made an agreement with Christopher before he died that I would use his small pension to pay for one good holiday per year, and take some of his ashes with me to scatter [...]
I’ve been pretty tense for the last few weeks. What with dealing with the anniversary of Christopher’s death, and working flat out on a major bid at work, things have been rather stressful at both home and work. Mind you, I don’t mean to complain about having to work hard – it’s been very good [...]
Those nice people over at Librivox have included a tribute to Chris in their anniversary podcast, which is available at http://librivox.org/2011/08/09/librivox-community-podcast-116/ There is a short piece about Chris right after the beginning. Note that it includes an extract of him reading William Wilberforce’s speech on abolishing slavery – so if you do listen to [...]
My sister has a new Amazon kindle which she was showing me at the weekend. It looked really good, and reminded me that there is a kindle app on Christopher’s iPad, that even has some e-books loaded onto it. I thought it would be worth giving it a go and seeing what it was like [...]
It was a year ago today that Christopher died. Well, it was on 7th August, but that was a Saturday last year, so it was yesterday that really hurt the most. Thank you all very much for your cards, thoughts, emails and blog comments – you probably don’t realise how much help you’re being. I [...]
The Big Chill Festival is on again in the grounds of Eastnor Castle, just down the road from me. Last year, the disruption it caused to us locals was massive. On the Thursday night, I had needed to get home from the hospice, and the friend who gave me a lift got caught in the [...]
Work has just gotten crazy this past fortnight. I’m in the middle of a major bid which is taking up a huge amount of everyone’s time and energy, not just mine. On the one hand, that’s a very good thing right now – it gives me something concrete to focus on and keep me busy. [...]
I got a letter from the local council yesterday, informing me that my application for planning permission for the garden has been granted, with no additional conditions. I now have three years to get the work done – though obviously I’m not expecting it to take nearly that long. Now I “just” have to find [...]
