I’ve done all the most necessary auction work and paid the clients. Though i’ve just remembered a couple more emails I need to send, but there’s no huge hurry for those; then I have to do the accounts and I’m done until the spring. I could not do this too many times a year, it’s too much work for an old girl!

I went to see Rose today and she took me out to lunch at the nice pub along the road. It looks a bit impersonal as you go in, but the staff are really lovely and the food is good.

I’ve packed up the car. Travelling light this time, a basket of clean laundry, a cool box and a small suitcase, plus a few books and the laptop. I’m not taking much food – I usually say this and then do, but I’ve just got vegetables that will be past their best if I leave them here, some wine for tomorrow night and some bread and yoghurt for Saturday morning. I can go shopping after that, but I’m seeing Tim’s sister-in-law and her husband on Saturday and may well stay the night with them. So nice that I have gained family through Tim. I miss him so badly. It hasn’t even started to get easier. It doesn’t help to dwell on it, though. I talk to him a lot, but I have no sense of his presence.

But that wasn’t what I meant to write about. All is well here and Wink will look after everything until I’m home again next week. Minimal internet, so probably won’t write.