I get up to another bastard cold morning. I still manage a 30-minute morning shift; which is good, considering that winter all but killed my writing efforts last year. I have a busy morning ahead, not least because I have yet to make lunches for the kinderbesten.

This is how the morning goes … I drop the Kinderbeast at school, then drive the Elderbeast to his PEAC class. I have a meeting to get to first thing at work, which I already know I’m going to be late to. The meeting is in another part of campus to my usual office. I manage to get a reasonably close parking place and arrive just a few minutes late. Remarkably I’m not the last person to turn up. This one lasts half an hour, giving me another half hour before a second meeting in exactly the same room. It’s not worth heading back to my office, so I grab a coffee check some emails and take a walk, with a call from my mortgage broker conveniently arriving in the middle. My second meeting more or less wraps up in time for me to leave and collec the Elderbeast from PEAC. The teacher tells me he’s not been feeling well all morning (though he has managed two bowls of goulash that one of the other kids has brought in). I decide to take him home to rest for the afternoon and then it’s back to work.

I have some lunch, reply to some emails, then it’s time for another meeting–it’s in the same place as my first two meetings of the day, so there’s a bit of a stroll. It’s sunny on the way there, and then pouring with rain on the way back. I field some more emails and then I have to leave early as I have an appointment with the bank to sign my new mortgage papers (this is the bit where I refinance the house and have it all transferred to my name only – it’s exactly as much fun as it sounds). I’m expecting this meeting to last less than half an hour (go in, sign papers, go out again). Instead it takes over 90 minutes. At the end of it my head is swimming and my stomach is groaning.

I head home, finally, and make a vat of cauliflower curry. It’s delicious. The Elderbeast, still feeling sorry for himself, does not eat. I strongly suspect he will not be going to school in the morning.