I was pretty much exhausted for the first three days – not sure why, because my sleep was no worse than it normally is, although there is a two hour time difference. On Wednesday I wrote something, but it was such a moany mess that I gave up and decided not to share it, while yesterday I didn’t even try. So here’s my effort for today.

On Sunday evening Laura was trying to persuade me to go up and stay with them for a few days, but it was really the last thing I felt like doing. I know that she wants me to see their new house -I want to see it too. And she kept saying: ‘we don’t know how long it will be before it’s possible again.’ I thought she meant because she’ll be back at work full-time from next week, but I’ve been thinking about it since. It’s true, we really don’t even know if Christmas together will be an option.

It feels as though the wedding and holiday has been a kind of watershed- for most of the year it seemed so uncertain that it wasn’t even worth thinking about, then when they came to visit at the end of July and I realised that she was still making plans (buying bridesmaids’ dresses etc) it felt more real, and then began the period of will it/won’t it? It’s caused so much uncertainty and stress that now it’s over, it’s both a relief, but also highlights how uncertain everything still is – and it’s brought back into focus the ways I spend (or waste) my time, the commitments I’ve made (or perhaps should be making) to myself and others, and my lack of motivation to do anything at all, the lack of purpose and satisfaction in my life.

Well, I’ve made a start – on the least threatening and stressful thing – bringing my finances up to date, checking my statements, filling in my spreadsheets. That’s the thing I always resort to when I want to feel as though I’m doing something useful. There’s always a ‘right’ answer, which I can find by checking and double checking, and it exercises my brain.

Miko has made it plain she wants me to come on the computer. So here I am/we are, she on the desk, currently looking out of the window, with her tail caught up between the last two fingers on my left hand

Arrived home at nine-thirty last evening, after a fairly stressful – because not very well planned – journey back from Heathrow (bus to Woking; another bus to Guildford; train to Fratton; then taxi home). By asking for advice from real people, not trying to find it online, I avoided the rail-replacement bus most of the way and the connections worked like a dream.

And as for the holiday and wedding, booked over a year ago, almost cancelled the first time when Thomas Cook went out of business, but reorganised through the efforts of the bride (my daughter) negotiating directly with the wedding planner and the hotel and rebooking the flights (which were changed again as recently as a couple of weeks ago, from Gatwick to Heathrow). Then this strange spring and summer, of not thinking about it – at first because it seemed so far in the future, too far to worry and plan on it ever happening, not knowing what the situation would be by the middle of September, whether there would be relative freedom of travel or we’d be back into the second wave by then (never seriously thinking it would ‘all be over’ in time). Then Cyprus opened to British tourists from 1^st August, on condition of getting a negative covid test within 72 hours of flying, and it started to seem like it might happen after all – so then all the stress and panic of having to prepare for maybe going or maybe not going, and that awful last week of having to organise the tests and not knowing until the day before we left that I was actually going.

After all that – it could have been a massive anti-climax. It wasn’t. Wonderful hotel in a fabulous location, lazy days of relaxing and swimming, playing with the grandchildren, watching them play, eating too much, drinking too much, walking on the seafront and reading in the shade. And a beautiful ceremony on Thursday, overlooking the sea; the bridesmaids (all seven of them, in ages from four to not quite ten times that) in blue, the bride in an elegantly simple cream dress, my little girl, so happy, after all her herculean efforts to keep this dream going. Feeling like minor celebrities in the massively under-occupied hotel, as total strangers among the fellow guests smile and say hello afterwards.

And now, back home, with unpacking and washing and Miko reminding me of my morning writing ritual, wondering what happens next, and where life goes from here.