Number of days since lockdown: 73

Number of cigarettes Mum and I have smoked in last 24 hours: nil. Hurrah!

Number of times my mother has watched Midsummer Murders in the last week: just don’t ask.

Yesterday I said I was going to say something about the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in America and the UK following the tragic killing of George Floyd. Who was much loved, innocent and an upstanding pillar of his community. But who should not have died that way even if he had been a hardened criminal. I have wracked my brains and been struggling to know what to write without sounding trite or holier than thou or muscling my way in simply because I have a mixed race granddaughter.

And then I saw this online and I thought I would just say instead that I agree with every word of it. I used to think James Corden was a bit too pleased with himself. Maybe he still is. But on this important matter, he speaks for me. So I don’t need to say any more on that subject.

In more local news, my mother has discovered that I have been cheating. No, no that sort of cheating. Can we move on, please? I mean the sort of cheating you do to an elderly parent when you pretend to be watching something ghastly on TV with them like the aforementioned Midsummer Murders, which seems to be available as a rolling programme of the same 1five episodes every night on ITV3. Or Doctor Foster, ditto. When in fact you are watching Killing Eve on your phone with only one headphone. That sort of cheating. My mother is disgusted. She thinks that everyone in the household must watch the same thing at the same time or the sky will fall in.

I hate to mention but it already has.

It is seven days days since my lovely Dad died in hospital after a second major stroke. And with none of us beside him because of this bloody virus.

But there is a small bit of good news. Because at last Mum seems to be drawing a tiny bit of comfort from having been allowed to visit him the day before he died. This is a tremendous relief to me. And to my sister, whose own brush with Covid-19 seems to have been minor compared with most. Lydia hopes to arrive here next week, in time for the very small funeral we have been organising for 12.00 on Friday 12 June.

Here are the rules for funerals these days, as explained to me in various Zoom calls with the kindly but perhaps rather abrupt funeral director Mr Heap from the Co-op.

• First off, there is no chance to be choosy. You take the date and time slot you are given.
• You can’t hold the funeral in a church because they are still all shut, only at the crematorium, or cemetery if the person is to be buried.
• Only 8 people may attend, and you all have to sit 2 metres apart, even the ones who live together, because the staff can’t tell who is a risk to whom so they have to apply blanket rules.
• You can have one small wreath but otherwise no flowers.
• If you want someone to take the service, such as a priest or celebrant, they are included in the eight people.
• You can film the service for people elsewhere to watch live, but you have to do this yourself or get a professional to do it and they will then be included in the eight people.
• In the case of a cremation, which is what we have opted for, you may collect the ashes a week later, but if you want them interred, you will have to hang onto them for the time being as they are only burying bodies at the moment.

Lydia and I would like to put his ashes where Ruth is buried, and have the stone changed to include him, with space for Mum in due course, but we haven’t discussed this with her yet. In the past, mention of anything relating to her mortality would have her hissing vituperatively that we just wanted her in the ground next to our sister. We would like to avoid such remarks at this time if we can.

When Mum first told me she wasn’t planning to attend Dad’s funeral, I will admit I was not surprised. You can always count on our mother to take the road less travelled. Since then, Lydia and I have been using reverse psychology when talking about the funeral. We have been involving her in plans about it and just ignoring it when she says she doesn’t care what we do because she won’t be there to see it.

And this morning there was a breakthrough. I was helping her to get dressed when she said that she needed to go over to Waylands Heath to pick up some more clothes.

I said You’ve got loads of clothes here, Mum.

And she said, But I need something for next week. I can’t go to your father’s funeral wearing jogging bottoms and a pair of slippers.

And I thought, Get in. But I knew better than to say so.

And then she said something that gave me a massive jolt, because it chimed with what Dad had said when she was in hospital with Coronavirus and we thought she might die.

She said, When I die you will have to do things differently.

And when I asked why, she said, Because I was born in the Jewish faith, Sadie, and I shall die in the Jewish faith.

And I said what are you talking about, Mum?

But she just turned and stumped off to the bathroom on her frame. And now I literally do not know what to think.

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