I’ve been in my element in some respects today, because I need to make plans and that’s what I’m good at.  Seeing what needs to be done and analysing how to do it.  I don’t necessarily have to do it all myself, hem hem.

And then I came home and I got quite involved in reading really boring documents, of a type that interest me and few other people (a closet nerd is still a nerd), namely the Governors’ Handbook and the Academies’ Financial Handbook – latest versions, with particular reference to the changes.  It’s a sad thing to admit, but I like to know the rules.  I don’t necessarily follow them, unless they are statutory, when I do.  Clearly.

I spent so long on that, that I’m not quite ready yet for tomorrow’s meeting.  But I’m up to date overall, I feel quite buzzed and up with it.

However, I had a sudden let down, a couple of hours ago.  I was in the kitchen and had just counted the bottles of wine in the rack and then was thinking of something else, when the loss of Russell hit me.  I don’t know why, but then I don’t know why it usually doesn’t.  My shield is usually up but, for a while, it wasn’t and I was hit hard.

I tell you this because I trust you not to think you have to do anything.  I got through it and I’m all right again*.  Poor Russell, I sometimes feel that I block him too much, yet I need to.  And he blocked me, I tried my best to help him and he wouldn’t let me. I suppose he couldn’t, and I can’t, and that is the way we both are made.  I juggled a bit with the tenses there, but came down to the present, because that’s where I am and it’s where he would like to be and, in a way, he is with me, even if I can’t feel him there.

Anyway,  Let’s move on.

Baking – I’ve been thinking of making bread again, but then I don’t eat much of it.  So I’m thinking about yeast cookery in general.  Danish pastry, brioche, croissants and so on and so on – I feel the need to cook and to be engaged with cooking and that seems to suggest kneading – literally hands on – does that make sense?  Not that it matters if it doesn’t.

I had a phone call from the RNIB this evening – that’s the main charity for the blind.  It means a lot to me, my grandfather went blind and I dread it almost as much as dementia – no, nowhere near as much, except selfishly, that if I lost my mind I wouldn’t know, whereas the awfulness of losing my sight would hit me every day.  Anyway, I have a monthly standing order and subscribe to their quarterly raffle too.  I recognised the comfortable Scottish voice of the woman who rings me each time and said at once that she could send me raffle tickets.  But she had a new question – did I normally buy them myself or sell them on?  Well, this and that, but normally the former – so we dealt with the transaction briskly, I said how many I would buy and paid by debit card there and then.  I said that it reminded me of my mother when she used to hold coffee mornings, 30+ years ago and said to me and Wink, she would like to just charge people a fiver not to come and everyone would be saved time and trouble and the money go straight to the good cause.

*ish