The lesson of funerals being, as ever, shut up with your moaning and grab life with both hands while you have the chance, I got myself up early, into my car and straight up those motorways to visit my darling ED. [Ed: Huh, like it was that easy] All the time I couldn't go up there, I didn't, but the minute I could I just went.

She's better than when I last saw her, much more present, but still tires in no time at all - the effort she has to make, first to think, then to speak, is only sustainable in short bursts. My baby. She is my baby again - what would give us both a moment's peace would be for her to curl up on my lap, in my arms - maybe next time I'll be there when she has a nap and can slip onto the bed beside her for a cuddle.

When I was there, in retrospect, I was quite fidgety - I haven't yet developed a strategy for arriving at that place in a state of genuine calm and tranquility, there being two problematic factors namely 1) my daughter effectively has dementia at the age of thirty five and lives in a nursing home now and for the rest of her life so suck on that, recovering motherfucker, and 2) motorways, which are direct and easy and far quicker than the alternative even when you do get stuck, but which require proper concentration as you are hurtling along in a metal box surrounded by random other boxes, and statistically speaking some of them will be being driven by people who are impatient, distracted, drunk, angry, exhausted, suicidal or just inexperienced, driving rusty old shitters that could pack in at any moment.

Fuck it - I've been driving along at about eighty in the middle lane, in my old Micra, and it just died, lost all power and slowed down to nothing. I made it over to the hard shoulder though I've never remembered how. Man, that was one of the worst days ever. About this time of year, we were skint, I was a year into my first and most comprehensive breakdown, twitchy and gibbering, head full of unspeakable thoughts, Christmas coming, wanting to make it nice, me and YD borrowed some money, just enough to get us up to Ikea where you can get nice things dirt cheap. I wasn't sure I could handle the whole Ikea thing, it was going to be heaving with Christmas shoppers and once you're in, you're right fucking in, miles from the exit, wherever the fuck that is, and YD was talking me along, telling me I'd be fine (poor kid, she was only seventeen) and then suddenly, wham, here we are in a dead car at the side of the road with lorries thundering past, in that grey, wintery light. Before mobile phones.

We scuttled over the fence and up the bank, out of the way (see above, metal boxes etc), freaked out and freezing as neither of us had proper coats on. YD persuaded me that there were phone boxes for emergencies - maybe there was a small sign, with a phone and an arrow - anyway I ended up walking into the traffic for what seemed like miles, weeping the opening bars of what would develop into an epic, ultimate weep. I sobbed into the phone where an uninterested voice flatly informed me they were having a rush on and she couldn't say when he would get to me, but it would be hours and no, me being certified mental health didn't make any difference, sorry, bye.

We alternated between being fucking freezing or fucking freaked out, as we moved from the car to the grassy knoll and back, endlessly, endlessly waiting on that fucking motorway. A bloke turned up, looked under the bonnet and said car words at me and I cried and he hooked the car on the back of his truck and we got into his cab and off we went, god only knew where, to a garage. We sat on hard chairs at one end, opposite the office while the car was fixed, having an urgent conversation about how much it would cost and the presents and what would we have for tea as we hadn't got the swedish meatballs and who else might lend us a few quid and my glasses were old and shit and slid down my nose all the time and kept filling up with tears as all this water just poured and poured in torrents out of my eyes and we could see blokes in the office looking at us when they came in to answer the phone. They charged us a tenner less than I had in my purse, which Bloke said, when we got home, was gob-smackingly kind of them as the parts would have cost twice that.

But a lot of the time the traffic clogs right up, which is when I take photos, for my occasional album 'Sitting on the M225', trying to get a bit creative. Here's today's:



and here's where we sat for a while, me and ED



Grateful for: safe journeys there and back; kind care home workers; ED having her face back - I know she's in there; being able to download books (I saw this when I was searching: "Everything written by Reginald Hill is better than every book not written by Reginald Hill," - he's not wrong; my comfy bed

Night night xxxxx