There have been moments of the day that have been magical. Actually, if I’m honest it was just the one moment but it did last a little while. I’ve missed out on my swimming for the last two Fridays because of the non-cold – which is still, incidentally, hanging round masquerading as a cough. Cue shuffling, tuberculotic hacking.

So having missed the exercise and the compelling smell of chlorine on the skin – I am to be found on Friday afternoons sniffing my forearms a lot – I was keen to get back to my Friday lunchtime treat of a few laps of the pool. I arrived to find the pool completely empty, unusually, and it was serenely blissful to do my lengths in the tranquillity of aloneness. Alone, that is, apart from my own personal life guard, a young man who worked his net alongside me. I don’t know if I looked like a feeble middle-aged woman that might get into difficulties easily or have a sudden heart attack in the pool and need fishing out but I prefer the illusion that my luscious mermaid form gliding through the water was drawing him like a moth to a flame.

Anyway it was quite the most perfect part of the day.

Other parts of it were less adequate of course like the moments of paranoia about people not replying to messages and mails. I don’t know why I get like that – I should get counselling for that maybe!

This evening we went to watch a local group performing The Gondoliers. It was like the curate’s egg, best with a pinch of salt – and a teaspoon. A moderned up version of the G&S classic which luckily had enough novelties in it to keep us awake during the duller tunes. There are always a few numbers in any musical which if it were on television could be usefully used as a kettle or loo stop – but in the theatre you are trapped in your seat and all you can comfortably do is rest your eyes for a few moments. During the interval my mother snared another dead animal story – the tale of a hamster decapitated by a fold-up bed – she is a magnet for these things.

I am looking forward now to a weekend of not very much – ah perfect.