Friday: A funeral, food, and a film

As previously thought, I didn't make the funeral today. I'm told it was a very moving and lovely service, and that pretty much the entire rest of the family was there. I've been horribly, horribly out of touch with them all, and it is a missed opportunity. It seems that it was almost inevitable that, come 3pm, I felt that I probably could have gone after all. I guess that I was never going to have known that this morning, so it wouldn't have been sensible to chance it and risk being ill.

I guess the silver lining is that my morning at home showed me that my digestive system is finally beginning to get back to normal. I'm hardly getting those horrible repeated cramps at all now, and I've been gradually getting back to a normal diet.

It has, in fact, been a busy day. I woke up just in time to say goodbye to my brother, and Dad and Carole, and also to my step-brother Marc and his girlfriend Rhonda who also stayed last night. After a relatively relaxed morning I ended up setting off in my car at 1pm. I drove all the way to my flat in NW6 to pick up a very important box of medication that I realised I had inadvertantly left there, then after grabbing a quick sandwich headed straight back up the M1 to St. Albans to see Kathy and Patrick who were all on their tod while Charles was at the funeral.

Kathy and I had a lovely chat, then woke Patrick up from his nap, and spent the afternoon in the park, attempting to supervise our boisterous and highly energetic 2-and-a-half-year-old charge. He hasn't got a great appreciation of the joys of sharing toys and facilities in the playground, and has a tendancy to get a bit physical with those he deems to be interrupting his play, so it requires quite some attention! I also happily indulged his enthusiasm for standing by the fence to watch trains go by, up to and slightly beyond the point where Kathy was getting uncomfortable standing still (I keep forgetting that being nearly 6 months pregnant is likely to put a bit of a strain on her back...)

Later we went back to St. Albans and I read to Patrick quietly on the sofa and watched a little Thomas the Tank Engine with him while Kathy made his dinner. Finally we bathed him and Charles came back just in time to put him to bed. Immediately after this, or just as soon as the baby-sitter arrived, I headed out with Charles and Kathy to Hatfield where we indulged in a large and delicious meal from Bella Italia (so much better than you would expect from a chain restaurant), and then watched the new film Watchmen in the neighbouring cinema.

The film did start very promisingly, for the first hour, with quite a fresh take on the superhero/comic genre. Unfortunately by the second hour it lost its way, and by the time we were creeping into the 3rd hour it had descended in to meaningless and self-indulgent special-effect-laden drivel and had lost our attention completely.

Finally at 10-past-midnight I drove Charles and Kathy home, and made it back to Watford by just after 1am (hence this posting date being Saturday). I don't know why but the sheer normality of sitting through a film, being out during the evening, and driving around listening to music in my nice new car made me absolutely grin like crazy, and I am suddenly quite optimistic that I'm back on track and ready to take on the world once again.

Hopefully when I stop buzzing then I shall shortly fall asleep for a nice long time, and be ready for an even better day tomorrow (or, er, later today).