I opted for a postal vote a few years ago, when I would be away during an election and I’ve left it. So my lack of enthusiasm for voting had to be addressed relatively early. I considered not voting at all, because there’s no party I have wanted to vote for, not for years and i’ve voted three different ways in the last three general elections. But not voting just feels wrong too. Anyway, I finally chose and voted and posted it, so if I wanted to change my mind, it’s too late. I am very aware that I don’t matter, anyway.

Wink is away for the weekend and it’s no more quiet here than usual, yet it feels quieter. Ecat has been obliged to make a fuss of me, because she has no one else. I had to get up at 7.15 to give her breakfast, which would have been fine if I’d not spent most of the night awake – as it was, I went back to bed and to sleep and finally got up after 9 o’clock, to the indignation of the outdoor cats. Barney had a lot to say about it.

The bantams are being so good. I count them all back every evening and they are all present and correct. Two are broody and stay indoors, the others love their freedom. Not having a cockerel makes it easy, as I know I won’t have a clutch of chicks to deal with. However, I don’t necessarily rule out bringing in another boy in the future. I don’t feel any need to decide, for the time being. My daughter instructed me, a couple of months ago, not to have another cockerel. I was a bit upset, in fact. I realise I’ve reached the age where my children think it’s okay to tell me what to do and not what to do – only the older two have done that so far – but I’m not so old that it feels acceptable. I do have a long term plan in mind, but it may never happen and I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.

I’m blathering, because I’ve got a lot of plates spinning and can’t talk about them. But it would be wrong to complain. My long-term blog friend Ally, of Ducking for Apples, who had to stop blogging for extended family reasons a long time ago, lost her daughter – not unexpectedly, it had been on the cards for a decade and the likelihood crept nearer as years went by – and her funeral was today. Nenna was only 15. Their dignity – the whole family’s – and grief are immense. I watched the funeral online and it was very moving. The vicar was lovely. Where to go from here, I can’t imagine it. For several days, they have had a funeral to arrange, which has taken much less time than day-to-day care for a child who needed frequent nappy changes, showers, tube feeding, endless entertaining, lots of love, but now there’s nothing except the regular, ordinary stuff that hardly matters at all. But caring for yourself, your partner, your older child, your parent and your pets takes some of the time. The first part – caring for yourself – is probably the hardest, but no less necessary.

I’m taking swimming lessons. I have had two swimming positions, floating and drowning. To avoid either of them, I’ve held on or kept a foot on the bottom, for years. This is silly. I now can move from floating to standing. I haven’t yet cracked not drowning if I don’t have a foot on the bottom (unless I’m floating), but I will have by the end of Wednesday, because this is ridiculous. If not duffers won’t drown.