Today, I’ve been flower arranging, babysitting, cooking, eating, drinking, playing games and chatting.

Not much time for writing. I haven’t even read the papers.

I have, however, already prepared the vegetables for tomorrow’s lunch, so I’m feeling quite good-housekeeperish.

Numerous annoyances of the smaller sort in the past few days, so best to shut up now before I start to whinge about them all.

Happy Easter, darlings

xx Z

…of the Last Supper that I’ll ever read, I should think. From The Times television pages –

Jesus enjoys a final meal with His Disciples before being betrayed by Judas.

Enjoys a final meal? Sounds more like a stag night than anything I’ve ever read in the Gospels.

Our little girl is 3 today.

Last night, she helped Al and Dilly wrap a couple of presents for Pugsley, so that he would not feel left out (and not try to help open hers). This morning, she was up bright and early at her parents’ bedside, wanting to give them to him. They went into the sitting room. She was chattering happily “Look, Pugsley, here are some presents for you because it’s my birthday, come on and open them.” “What about your presents, Squiffany?” said her father. She looked around. A chair was adorned with balloons and piled with parcels. “What’s that? Has Father Christmas come?”

It had slipped her mind that you receive rather than give presents for your birthday. She soon adjusted to the idea though, and started unwrapping.

“Oh! That’s lovely! It’s just what I’ve always wanted – is it a game, Mummy?” Everything she opened was ‘just what she’d always wanted’.

She’s having a succession of small parties – one at toddler group this morning, another in the early afternoon and a third later on, when another friend is home from school. We’re going at about 3 o’clock, when I get home from lunch.

I decided to buy art & craft-y things and some books. I went to both the toy and the art department of the only large family-owned department store left in the centre of Norwich. Everything aimed at small children was emblazoned “No Mess!”, being designed to offer as little creativity and fun as possible. I put together some glittery paint, coloured paper and card, coloured pipe cleaners, tissue and crepe papers, some templates, pens and coloured pencils, playdough with cutters, glitter, confetti, cotton wool balls, a sponge and some brightly coloured brushes, wooden lolly sticks, a book on craft ideas (aimed at a rather older child, but there just wasn’t anything and her mother can simplify it), a couple of story books and a cook book and have wrapped them all in bright paper with no sticky tape (so she can reuse it) and arranged them in a box.

A little book (The Owl and the Pussycat) and some coloured pencils and a colouring book for Pugsley.

And I’ll offer my services for when they want to get messy. Fortunately, their mother and father are all in favour of creative mess.

I’ve been losing things again. I thought I was all set for this afternoon’s meeting, until I looked for the paperwork, which the chairman had gone through with me thoroughly last Thursday. It could only have been in one of three rooms, but I couldn’t find it. I quickly eliminated the drawing room, because it was quite tidy and anything out of place would have been obvious. The kitchen was also tidy by my standards, so a search didn’t take long. The study took longer. Ages. I’d been going through some papers over the weekend, so the usual vertical structure had been disturbed – and then, when I was printing out the address labels for our auction catalogue, with one page to go the printer decided it had run out of ink (my old printer was polite enough to squeeze out just enough ink, but this one is a beast, although it’s the same make) and I had to take a tottering pile of *stuff I need* off it to open it up. Eventually, I gave up and went and searched all the places I’d already looked and then, as a last resort, looked at the place the Sage keeps Stuff in the kitchen, and there it was.

At the meeting, amongst other matters, we discussed the recent Ofsted inspection – the result is officially out today, although it’s the last day of term, so the pupils and parents haven’t heard it yet. At a later stage in the meeting, I mentioned the recent school production of Jesus Christ, Superstar, which was superbly done. The Head said that he’d firmly led the inspector in to a rehearsal -“just for five minutes” he told his colleagues. Forty-five minutes later, they sent for him. He declared it “Outstanding.” “You can tell he works for Ofsted,” mused a governor. “Anyone else would have said ‘Great, superb'”. “I expect he says that to his wife, too,” I added “when she serves a particularly delicious meal”. The Head looked a bit alarmed. “I wondered what you were going to say then”. I can’t deny it, the first thought that had come into my mind was a touch less suitable for a governors’ meeting. However, as ever I went on the attack. “You’d not have thought that if Mary had said it,” I accused.

Later, I chatted to Dilly, and told her about my missing papers. It wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t been chairing the meeting, but I’d have been stuffed without them. I told her where they had been found “Ah. That was me. I cleared the kitchen table on Saturday for lunch…sorry”. I assured her that I didn’t mind at all. I was only glad that it wasn’t I who had put them in the wrong place.

Lunch with my luncheon club, for I am that sort of Laydee, tomorrow. Actually, it will be a sad occasion. One of our number, a lovely person whom we’d known for nearly twenty years, died last week following a fall down concrete steps. Although in her 80s, she was in good health and cheerful spirits and it’s been a great shock for us all. We particularly feel for her sister, who was with her at the time.

Dilly emailed me last night to ask how to put the dots on my name. I replied that, on a Mac, it’s alt+u, then the letter – e for a diaeresis or u for an umlaut, but I didn’t know for a PC. I googled to find out. For a ë, one way of doing it is Alt + 137. But each letter has a different combination of three numbers and, capitalised, another set again. Unless you use them all, all the time, you couldn’t possibly remember them. But the Mac makes sense – it’s the option key and c for a cedilla, because you’re most likely to want one under a c and Alt+e for an acute accent, and so on.

I wonder, if Macs hadn’t been there, whether PCs would be so easy to use now as they are?

Okay, to cheer us all up…

When my mother came out of hospital, we felt quite cheerful – only a few days earlier she had been very close to death, but a stent and a couple of litres of blood had perked her up no end. She, my sister and I coped with it best with black humour and there were a lot of funeral and cancer jokes – though that was between the three of us; when a quite close friend tried to join in the hilarity we felt it hit the wrong tone entirely.

One day, the phone rang. Mummy was in bed and Wink and I were both sitting in the elegant but not very comfortable Edwardian armchairs in her bedroom. Mummy picked up the phone – it was evidently someone wanting to send her raffle tickets to sell for charity. She listened politely and then replied “I’m afraid I’ll have to say no – I’m rather ill and only just out of hospital”. “We’ve got until December 17th before the draw takes place,” said the caller brightly. “Unfortunately,” said my mother fruitily, but with great kindness, “I may not have until December 17th myself.”

Embarrassed apologies and goodbye and the phone went down. All three of us fell about laughing. We were still chuckling when the phone rang again a minute later. Mummy picked it up and said ‘Hello.” A squawk of dismay and another apology from the horrified chugger, who had been so flustered that she’d redialed.

We nearly cried with laughter. For days later, one of us would recall it and snort again with mirth.

As you may know, I only note good anniversaries on the whole, but the exception is today, it being the fifth anniversary of the death of my mother.

She’d lived with us, in a Granny annexe, for 15 years, though she didn’t much enjoy it – she felt that she’d rather lost her identity, living in her son-in-law’s house, amongst other things, and she’d not been well at all for several years. She had numerous tests, but it was not until she became acutely ill in the September that a secondary cancer was found in her pancreas and we were told that the longest she could hope to live was 6 months. She had a stent put in to keep the bile duct open and was given painkillers and sent home. This was fine, I could look after her and we accepted the situation.

I’ve sometimes wondered whether to write about it all, but I’m not sure what I’d be doing it for. But I will say this – those final six months were fabulous. She became remarkably well and even was able to drive again. I cooked all her food – she had to have a very low fat diet and had become rather faddy about food in the years when she had cancer somewhere in her digestive system, so was often ill after eating: she blamed the food rather than her body because so many tests had come up negative. I’m adept at managing any type of diet as a result and never forget an allergy or preference. You want no gluten, no dairy, high protein, low GI, no nuts, fish or sugar, I’m your girl and will incorporate it into a meal with none of the other diners being aware of it.

Anyway, she was fine and, as the doctor had told us, she died quickly – she felt unwell on the Wednesday evening, was finally given a morphine pump on Saturday midday and died soon after midnight on Sunday morning. Quite a weekend, that, for another reason too – I’ll probably tell you about it some day. I could also tell you about her funeral, which was exceeded in complexity only by that of the Queen Mother.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but doctors like a neatness in their estimations. They’ll say “it might be three days, it might be three weeks”, for example. In her case, when she asked – as you do, I think it’s irresistible even though you know it’s pointless – how long she might live, the young doctor said “six weeks to six months”. It just so happened that he said that on 17th September 2002, which was a neat coincidence.

As ever, the Sage was marvellous. I left a request that the pork should be put in the oven at 11 and the potatoes at 12.30. I finally arrived home at 1 o’clock, to discover that the potatoes were coming on nicely, so were the parsnips (which I hadn’t mentioned as I expected to be home somewhat earlier) and that he had decided that the meat was cooked and had removed it from the oven. He was right.

Lunch was on the table at 1.30 sharp (I plan food to be ready on time, I can’t help it. Synchronised cooking is a habit too ingrained to break). We ate in the kitchen, as the dining room table is occupied at present. The kitchen table seats 6 and there were 9 of us, so a small mahogany table was brought in from the drawing room and Pugsley used a high chair so that we could all sit together.

The loin of pork weighed 3.6 kilos at the start, but an hour later there was nothing left but bones, and great bowls of vegetables vanished too*. Pugsley unexpectedly discovered that carrots are delicious and ate a great deal of them.

Everything got washed up or stacked in the dishwasher as it was finished with. Usually, I find a few dismally forgotten crocks on the dining table the next day.

Several members of the family have birthdays in the next few weeks, so Squiffany and her mother had made and decorated a lemon cake, which we ate on Saturday. Come to think of it, the weekend rather revolved around food.

A busy few weeks coming up. If I had any sense, I’d concentrate on work and not blog until after Easter, at least.

See you tomorrow, darlings.

*The vegetables. The bowls were left.

“Will you tidy up for my visits, when I’ve left home?” enquired Ro. “Probably,” I answered. He’d noticed. El and Phil are visiting this weekend and the kitchen was looking markedly less clutterful. “Maybe you do it because of Phil” he mused “…but then you don’t bother for Dilly. Must be because it’s a special occasion.” I agreed. Once he’s moved out and it’s a treat for him to visit, then I’ll tidy. Right now, he adds to the clutter.

He’s got a large bedroom, but somehow he needs to spread out a bit. I went into the spare bedroom to dust it this morning and found his clean washing spread out all over the bed, presumably so that it won’t get creased before he gets around to folding it. This is perfectly sensible and I don’t mind in the least, but it would be good if it had occurred to him to put it all away last night.

I’m just off to tidy the bedroom, I’ve got half an hour before leaving for the station. It’s lovely when the family comes to stay.

I left for the high school in adequate time, but I arrived a few minutes late – first I was stopped by a friend who had some papers for me … I said I’d call back … and then I was held up by roadworks. The road was so narrow that there wasn’t room for me to go on the inside of the queue of cars. At one point, I did, but then would have delayed the car I’d over (or under) taken. I looked back and a smiling lady was waiting, but I waved her on. I’m not that cheeky.

There was a written exercise this morning so the teacher, with exceptional trust, left me with the class for a few minutes while she went to do some printing for tonight’s performance of the school play (which I saw last night and was superb). Of course, during that time the head called in and looked amused to see me in sole charge. He left me to it – another one who overestimates my power over 14-year-olds. They were all behaving themselves at the time, mind you. A couple of lads are trying to push buttons, quite good-humouredly, but there’s no chance of me rising to the bait. They didn’t get a lot of work done, but most of the class did. The teacher says that they are the trickiest Year 9 class this year, but I must say that they are a good bunch. Some of them don’t have great attention spans, but there’s no malice and no bad behaviour apart from general mild exuberance. One lad, addressed by name, tried to convince me that his name was another one…sure, good try. I explained that there are some people whose names stick in the mind quite quickly. One girl, on the other hand, showed me her work at the end and asked if it was all right. It was neat, beautifully presented and had good content and I was impressed.

Dilly had yet another hospital appointment – her MRI scan was inconclusive and the consultant was apologetic. A biopsy comes next. She’s fine – I’ll tell you about it when I know what’s what.