30th March 2011

Another month which has whizzed by. It has been a challenging last few days:

Leaking bathroom- if we stood in the kitchen we could shower due to the leak from the bathroom above which is coming through the light sockets! So I managed to find a great handyman via a friend who has re-grouted and re-tiled most of the bathroom. He has also re-sealed and whitened the grout in our bathroom.

Broken laptop- I knocked my cup-a-soup over my laptop on Monday! It immediately stopped working. Thankfully I had just backed up my work. I have also managed to install NVivo on Harry's laptop and have copied my project onto that. So I can still work whilst a friend is going to try and retrieve the data from my old laptop. A lesson learnt.

Crisis with my mother- My mum's mental health is deteriorating and she allowed some dodgy guys to do some work on her roof. However, when they were demanding £600 from her a lady who was driving by recognised the roofers ( who had done the same to her ) and she dialled 999. The police arrived within minutes and did a great job. Apparently these guys were well known to them. My poor mum is obviously very shaken up about this. So I drove an almost 400 mile round trip on Sunday to go and see her. We had a nice day and I took her to my dad's tree and then we went out for something to eat. She is so confused though and can't remember much at all. It is a worry and she won't move in with us.

Working on a second draft chapter this week and just about to have a brief interlude to meet a friend who is coming over from Cambridge. I'm planning on taking her to the John Bunyan museum and then out for lunch.

Looking forward to a night in tonight. Monday we had book group and last night was Alpha which was excellent.