Wednesday 26th August 2020

I have been laid low for nearly a week. I decide to try to treat the day as normal.

In that I would have fruit for breakfast.

Once I was hungry.

We have a house full of cats, or it seems like that as both kittens can appear to be in several places at once. Which is a good trick. And as they get bigger, both Cleo and Poppy grow to look more alike to Scully and Mulder.

I had written to the solicitor the day before asking if the balance for our mortgage could be forwarded to us out of Mum's estate. It arrived just before end of work on Tuesday.

A significant five figure sum appeared on our bank balance.

There it was.

Bang.

The next task of the day was to get a statement of our remaining mortgage, something that takes time, longer than it took to arrange in the first bloody place. But this is something that would become familiar in the forthcoming 24 hours.

But once the statement was requested, all we had to do was wait.

The money is there. But it is a series of ones and zeroes, rather than a huge wadge of used fifty quid notes in our dirty mitts.

It still doesn't seem real.

I mean, I knew I was always going to be the sol beneficiary of my parent's estate, even through the dark days in the mid-90s when we didn't talk. But then once we learned that Mum had discovered equity release in the form of a lifetime mortgage, we resigned ourselves to their not being any money for us. We thought interest would eat up the value, then years of residential care.

Not that we minded, we bought this house realising we would have to work well into our 60s, nearly to our 70s. But the house and our life was worth it.

Then it changed overnight last September.

And here we are, nearly at the end of the journey, and with fistfulls of cash, and by the end of the week the house should be ours, our credit cards paid off, and early next month, the final loan paid off.

Debt free.

Wow.

But even all this is wonderful news, even if it did take Mum's passing for it to happen, I am very flat. I have no energy, not sleeping well.

There is always work. But I have caught up with work, so have time to do other secondary, but equally important tasks.

By mid-morning, it was a warm and sunny day, but the sun, now directly south, is much lower in the sky than a month ago, the light passes through leaves and petals of flowers, making their colours more vibrant. This will intensify next month with summer's last hurrah.

Jools makes lunch, marmalade sandwiches, just like a good Paddington Bear.

I still feel, bleugh.

I take the camera out, and end up chasing a Small White round the garden, and finally snap it resting on one of the raspberry canes, it holding its forewings behind its afts.

I do cook dinner at about six, breaded pork, stir fry and curried rice. And wine.

The wine wasn't clever, but wine always makes the most mundane of meals fell like a feast.

I struggle to stay awake through the evening, just about managing to to hear all of Marc Riley.