So I made it unscathed through day one of this mad bit.

Son fetched up mid-morning, after a crack of dawn session with his counsellor. I cooked breakfast - my current thing is to coarsely grate cooked potatoes, loosely pat them into big cakes and fry them to eat with bacon and fried eggs. I don't know if this is rosti or hash browns, but they're delicious, especially if you fry them in the same pan as the bacon.

Then we drove up here, to YD's and we've sat around chatting while she worked on a lino cut for the Christmas cards she's making to sell. SIL spent the whole day slowly (and I do mean slowly) getting their stuff ready for the car boot sale they're doing tomorrow. It's been good.

Tomorrow Bloke is driving up here to collect me to go to ED's. He loves driving and we're going the direct, across central London route, with him driving and me paying attention so I'll be able to do it alone. We're going to take ED out to a different park, mooch about with her in the fresh air, then he'll go straight home, I'll come back here on the tube, stay another night, then home to go to the art group on Monday morning. Now that I'm writing it down, I realise I have cut a lot of the madness out of this schedule. On Tuesday I meet with the health trainer to plan stopping smoking, followed by restorative yoga. Under the new, improved plan, I don't go anywhere else at all on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Bloke will be round early and we'll both take ED to the assessment at the hospital and come home the same day.

I realised that a) I couldn't do all the driving and b) I couldn't take ED out on my own, right now. But I need to know that my kids are OK - I needed that time in the car with Son and being here with YD. This is hard shit. Son is going to ask for a day off a month to visit his sister when I can collect him from the station and we can go together. And he's going to arrange an outing to a London football match - me and him, Bloke, Grandson, YD and both sons-in-law. I've been trying to remember the last football match I went to - I think it was 1969, I know it was Swindon v Burnley in the league cup. Son goes sometimes, and YD's husband but none of the others ever have and it's quite jolly as I remember, lots of singing of short rude songs. "Who's your father/ Who's your father/ Who's your father, referee?/ You ain't got one/ you're a bastard/ you're a bastard, referee!" That sort of thing. I've that heard Brighton fans sing at opponents' supporters, "You're too ugly to be gay!"

But the clocks have gone back an hour and it's still nearly 2 am, so night night, dear peeps

Grateful for: family; friends; feeling so comfortable in YD's home; Bloke; love

xxxx