Number of days since I started this blog: 93

Another sleepless night. Poor Mog, she tried to send me to sleep with her soothing purrs but her furry presence on the bed just made me hot.

And it doesn’t help to read what friends have been doing on Facebook. Not to mention the creative writing course WhatsApp group. When they aren’t signing petitions about Black Lives Matter, all-year free school meals or Save our Theatres, they are running marathons round their gardens, taking funny photos of their grown-out fringes or moaning about people who fail to observe the correct (according to them) interpretation of social distancing or face mask wearing etiquette when in Waitrose.

Meanwhile I have been dealing with:

1. A mother who has always been a bit scary and aloof, who hit my Dad over the head with a spatula and locked him in the garden so that the police had to be called, threatened to divorce him, then absconded, fell and broke her hip, nearly died of Corona virus, came to stay with me. And finally, aged 88, got round to telling us she had been a Jewish child refugee.

2. A father who faced all the above with great love and fortitude, plus survived cancer, only to be felled by several strokes and die 3 weeks ago.

3. A dead sister who is almost always on my mind. And a living one who means well and is mainly lovely but makes me feel inadequate.

4. A Boris Johnson loving ex-husband who won’t leave me alone.

5. A daughter who has recently come out, much to the annoyance of said ex-husband And a son who has a lovely partner and an adorable daughter but who is in a precarious profession. Which is good, because when I can’t think of anything else to worry about, I worry about that.

5. A lovely new man in my life who is far too good for me and who I don’t deserve. And who I am meant to be seeing tonight for an important discussion about our future together but I am a tired, crumpled, fat old crone.

Longer blog tomorrow, I promise. I’m off to smother myself in Clarins Beauty Flash Balm and hope for the best.

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