Wednesday 31 December – And so the old year shuffles off, and we won’t be sad to see it go. After my being ill for a fair bit of autumn and messing up her birthday, Dot broke her leg in the week before Christmas and is confined to bed.

It wasn’t all bad, of course. Today has been bright and quite chilly, and especially memorable because Oliver and Amy drove from Aylesbury to see us, make us lunch and then drove back again. We managed to keep it a surprise  from Dot until they arrived, which was lovely for her. They put together a really nice lunch of croissants, cheese, ham, salad and crisps. After they left at 3pm it felt a bit empty; we watched yesterday’s Match of the Day and a couple of other things. Dot watched two episodes of Stranger Things and then got involved in something called Riviera. I watched a programme featuring Bob Monkhouse’s last show – to a private audience of other comedians. I’ve always liked Bob Monkhouse, partly because he delivered my favourite joke: “They laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They’re not laughing now.” For some reason he reminds me of David Coomes.

I cooked some yellow haddock for our supper and watched a Champion Masterchef programme in which nobody did anything wrong but someone won. 

Thursday, New Year’s Day – Quite cold, but dry. Had a quick bath because Anne was coming to visit Dot. She arrived about 10.30 and stayed for a couple of hours. I joined in the conversation to start with but then left them to it. Cheered Dot up again, I think. House alarm went off twice for no apparent reason; I moved lighting wire away from main box, and nothing has happened since. Watched the end of Riviera on Netflix with Dot: she saw the whole first series. I cooked soup (pea and ham hock) and we finished off the blackberry and apple. Also had some mulled wine. Then watched (separately) the new first episode of The Night Manager, which was excellent. 

Friday – Very cold wind but dry. Snow in Braemar: A93 closed. So much  for my hopes for the alarm: it went off again at 3.15am; I reset it and it went off once more at 5.20am, at which point I rang the engineer. He arrived around 7.30am and thought he’d fixed it by adjusting some wires, but as he went to drive away it went off again, upon which he revised his opinion and felt perhaps the whole system needed to be updated; so he removed the battery and fuse, which prompted the outdoor alarm to go off for about ten minutes, as he predicted. Nothing since, thank goodness. 

Naturally I felt rather tired when I woke again at around 7.45pm. Took some paracetamol (as yesterday) and felt better by late afternoon (as yesterday).  Had a bath and then realised I should have been at Boots to collect my new glasses at 11.30. I rang them, and they said any time in the afternoon was OK. I walked up at 2pm, and the glasses seemed fine (after adjustment). Tried to get red milk on way back , but the one-stop shop had everything but; so I returned to Tesco on Prince of Wales Road and got their penultimate bottle, as well as some marmalade. Almost 7000 steps by end of day. Brief greeting of Michael and Margaret as we met on Aspland Road.

Later Mary came round with magazines, just after Dot had descended to living room for the first time. Fred rang – he’d heard about Dot. Then Janet and Derek Bower came and were able to have coffee with Dot. They brought a perch chair: not sure why.  After they left Dot went back to bed and I went over for street meet indoors at Des and Chris’s with Matthew. Very pleasant. Des got us fish and chips, but in taking it upstairs I spilled red wine on the stair carpet. Better keep Dot in the bedroom. Watched a very funny Would I lie to you? then some football – four matches, two goals. Washed and tidied up and went to bed.

Saturday – Very cold. Quite a bit of snow early on.  Des cleared our path late in the afternoon, when the snow had eased considerably. I went outside purely to empty rubbish – no real problem. Slept quite late and stayed in bed for a while reading paper and doing puzzles. Interrupted only by a routine call from the surgery checking on Dot’s medication. Crackers, cheese, pâté and various other items for lunch.

Dot managed to get down into living room for most of the afternoon, during which Bridget and David came bearing gifts, including food. Nice for us all to be able to sit in the same room. Then Des brought round food Mary had made for us – spaghetti bolognaise and  a strawberry dessert. Dot got back in bed to eat it more comfortably, and afterwards we watched The Holdovers, an excellent film about boys kept back at a boarding school over Christmas, under the supervision of a disillusioned teacher. Really well done. Felt quite ill at different times during the day – head was all over the place and I felt sick at one point. But as usual during the evening I felt better.