Routines

Being a creature of considerable habit, it's difficult when your normal routine is not only pushed out of kilter for a little while, but on an ongoing basis. Up until the end of August, I had spent nearly two decades getting up in the mornings for some prayer time and Bible reading, and then going off to work for the day, and then coming home at night for an evening at home, or out doing something non-work. Oh, and before I went to work, I went upstairs to do the cryptic crossword with my elderly mother. (She's 89)

But since August, my days have had no regularity whatsoever: I don't have a day job to go to, and now some of my evenings are taken up with work, from 6 till 10. Worse, my mother is very unwell and is in hospital, where doing the cryptic crossword without her help is distinctly non-regular. At first she could think clearly enough to work on the clues at a distance, as it were, from her bed. (She's always been able to answer the clues from a distance.) But even that's gone by the way, as she's struggled to keep awake long enough to do anything, even hold a conversation.

And then there's the matter of getting the evening meal that much earlier. Everything's all over the shop.