Judi was coming up to our place with her family at the weekend but the were snowed in! Service at Haddenham Methodist church last Sunday with a bit of a tribute for Mum by the people at church who knew her. There was a fair turn-out. I met people I've not seen for over a decade. I suppose most of them were middle aged when I lived in Haddenham in the eighties. After the service the origianl plan was to have a pub meal at the Green Dragon or the Rose and Thistle but in the event my cousin Chris and his wife had to go home and Judi and family were not there, so we swung by our old house and then went home.

We've engaged an estate agent to sell Mum's bungalow. I've done some back of the envelope sums and we're going to have to pay some inheritance tax on Mum's estate. It's strange to be worrying about such things.

Funeral on Friday. Brought the ashes back home today. Things are fairly complex with the process of probate to go through. Our solicitor (in Honiton) has obtained the will from Mum's solicitor, so things are progressing. We've got to have Mum's bungalow valued for probate and then probably we'll sell it. I met two estate agents today and they made hopeful noises about the market. We finished going through her things this weekend and the house is now empty. It still needs cleaning, but the largest part of the job is now complete. Judi, my sister seemed a lot better this weekend. She and Mum were very close and Mum's death was a great blow to her (as it was to me). I only saw Mum every six to eight weeks but Judi saw her every day and so not seeing her at all now is more difficult to adjust to. I'm going back to work tomorrow, so things should return to more or less normal until next weekend when we have another church service at Mum's old church in Haddenham to attend.

Ewan's first tooth appeared this morning. Explains why the poor little lad's not sleeping too well at the moment.

Pauline Read 3 Aug 1926 - 8 Nov 2005
Love you Mum.

Back to work as normal this week. Everybody's been very nice but sometimes the awkwardness is palpable. I know how it feels from both sides now. I work in IT and being we techies tend to be a little less able on the social side of things. I have tried to make it easier for my colleagues if possible by taking the initiative in conversation. It helps a little to talk about it but I find now that I tend to slip into a stock speech while thinking of a way to change the subject as quickly as possible. Ho hum.

Mum died last Tuesday night. She passed away peacefully in her sleep. We got back from Devon last night. The funeral is all arranged for Friday.
In the meantime it will be work as usual. We're going back down to Devon on Thursday and returning on Monday.

This could be the final piece in my green motoring jigsaw :http://www.goldenfuels.com/supply/ My Peugeot is already adapted to run on vegetable oil (I buy the cheap stuff from Tesco). Itt still needs to be started on fossil diesel to warm it up before it can run on veg oil. I think I'll try starting it on B100 biodiesel from Goldenfuels. It may require a trip to Oxford to buy some. This will make my motoring as carbon-neutral as possible. And all on a shoestring budget. See technical stuff and more about my dual fuel diesel at http://www.asmy29.dsl.pipex.com/Cars.html.