When it dawned on me that the hall and landing are quite unreasonably cold, I checked that the storage heater in the hall was turned on. It was, but it was stone cold. It seems that everything is going wrong at present. When I got up this morning, I gathered up my clothes and then retreated to bed again for ten minutes, to warm up enough to brave the cold again and put them on. It’s rare for me to put the heater on in my bedroom, but I think I’ll do it tonight. I put on the electric blanket early, anyway. Having been out this evening, I didn’t light the fire and so now, at 9.30, I’m sitting with an electric heater near me and a wooly hat on. I’m very warm, in fact. It was -2ºC when I got home, so not unreasonable for the time of year, but it’ll get colder in the night.

I’ve got various things to catch up on, in the admin department, that I’ve been neglecting in a busy week, so I’ll catch up over the weekend. I’ll also pay my tax bill, unnecessarily early but I can’t stand the stress of owing money.

All my efforts are directed to minimising stress nowadays, which is why minor disasters don’t touch me. Three friends have died since Christmas and another is very ill and so little things like a leaky pipe, a puncture, a cold radiator, are all trivialities that don’t matter at all. When a friend spilled a glass of water at lunch and we talked about clumsiness (which she claimed), I said that I only had to put a freshly-ironed tablecloth on the dining table for Tim to spill red wine and tomato sauce and I’m so glad I was always relaxed about it. The tablecloth didn’t matter, it would have been silly – you don’t love anyone less just because he spills things and you don’t cry over spilt milk (unless it’s been spilt in the car, where it’s very difficult to ever get the smell out of the fabric, I’m told).

In addition to that, I’ve never understood why some people think it’s okay to nag their other half about tidiness or doing a job a certain way. They both live in the same house, so why should one person be the only one to decide what it looks like? Of course, this made me Russell’s ideal partner and explains the chaos that became so natural to me that I still can’t quite escape it – but all the same, our respective viewpoints both held equal sway.