March 24

School finishes at 10.30 and I stop off at the shops to buy a few things.  People have started to go a bit nuts and trolleys are piled up.  Some people are wearing masks and gloves.

The phone rings: 

Sian: When are you coming home?

Me: I won't be long.  I'm at the shops.

Sian:  You've been away a very long time.

Me: I'll be back now.  Who's that coughing?

In films, as soon as someone starts coughing, you know they are a gonner, especially when they say, 'I'm fine.  Just a little cough. Nothing to be worried about.'  Usually, it's just when they have found the person of their dreams or had a promotion or discovered the secrets of the universe which makes their demise even more poignant. In films, no one ever just coughs for no reason.

That is how it has become in real life since the start of this virus so now when Ellie starts coughing, I cannot help but feel a little twinge of panic. I buy honey and lemons and something called fire cider which is made from Kombucha vinegar, garlic, ginger, tumeric and onions.  I'm going to sort that cough out.

News is that the coronavirus victim in Harare has died.  He wasn't even thirty and he was a government minister's son. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to be transferred to a private hospital from Wilkins, the government infectious diseases hospital as private hospitals are not yet allowed to receive patients.  I am sure he had access to huge amounts of money and it is ironic that he should die in a government hospital, especially as his father is on record for saying how good the Zimbabwean health system is. Some may call it bad luck and some may call it karma; either way, it has got all of us who depend on private health care very worried indeed.

March 23

I am the only one who goes to school from my family.  Throughout the morning, I am subjected to a volley of phone calls:

Sian: Hi Mom, when are you coming home?

Me: Sian, it's 7.20.  School hasn't even started.

Ellie: Mom, when are you coming home?

Me: I'll be home at lunchtime.

Ellie: What are you doing?

Me: Teaching.

Ellie: Oh. 

Ellie: What time will you back?

Me: Lunch time.

Ellie: We found some baby mice.  Can we keep them?

Me: Um . . . well, not sure.

Ellie:  They are very sweet.  Tallulah brought them up to the house and we have been feeding them.

Me: Oh, well that sounds nice.

Ellie: What time will you be home?

When I get home, I am introduced to the four baby mice.  I phone someone for advice as to how to look after them and she suggests Pronutro with water and says it's essential they are kept warm.  John reckons they are rats as he saw an eagle swoop down and then fly away with a rat; it was probably the mother.

One of the babies dies after lunch and another dies mid-afternoon.  The girls are very good at feeding the remaining two every hour, but in the early evening, Ellie's one dies, leaving only one more.  I put it under my top for body warmth and so it can hear and feel my heartbeat.  He is very wriggly and keen to dart off.  Sian takes over and does her best to keep him warm.  I have just gone to bed when Ellie comes and calls me and says he is struggling to breathe.  I cannot describe how sad I feel.  I know the girls have tried so hard all day to keep these little baby mice/rats going and it is obvious this one is going to die too.  A couple of years ago, we tried to save a little bushbaby that fell out of a tree and the same thing happened.  Its breathing became very laboured and then it died. This little thing is so tiny, but everything is perfectly formed; complete.  It dies anyway.

March 22

Sian goes to day two of her animal communication course.  I get up early to make her something for the bring and share lunch.  Vegetarian, of course, as I don't suppose you can learn how to communicate with animals and then sit down and eat one.  I make a roasted butternut and feta salad.  John suggests we throw in a whole lot of cumin seeds.

'You know what those kind of people are like,' he says.  'They love that sort of thing.  All healthy and seedy.'

John and I take the dogs for a walk at Hillside dams.  It is really beautiful and, as usual, we are the only people here.

It turns out to be a busy day of trying to finish schoolwork and mark books before we close on Tuesday.  

I am really enjoying this meditation course I am doing.  I take a chair into a part of the garden that is very shady and green, but not much used and sit there to do today's meditation.  Listening to the birds on its own is such a beautiful experience as well as watching butterflies and noticing how the sun comes through the leaves. It is so wonderful to just stop and have time out.

Sian comes back from the course and tries to show me how to mind read.  I have to say what she's thinking about.  I have to imagine a golden bond connecting from my mind to hers and then I will se an image of her thoughts.  On the seventh go I still haven't got it right.

March 21

Sian goes to day one of an animal communication course.  The idea is that she can learn to talk to Rolo and see what is going on inside that brain of his.  Sian wants to work with animals when she leaves school.  She spends whatever free time she has volunteering at a horse and donkey sanctuary and has fallen in love with one horse in particular, Hercules.  When she was very young, about one and a half, we lived in a cottage on the property of some people who had two very bouncy dogs.  Sian would spend hours outside with them, being knocked over and jumped upon and she loved it.  Early every morning, she would stand by the door waiting to be let out to see her friends.  She has not changed at all.

John and I decide we should do a big shop in case there is a lockdown.  After half an hour in Pick n Pay, we have about three things in the trolley and decide we are not very good at panic buying. The thing is that we don't really buy canned stuff and we are mainly vegetarian so rely on fresh fruit and vegetables.

We give our Eastend friend a lift.  She believes the Chinese should all be rounded up, sent back to China and then have a large bomb dropped on them.  There is some anger there, I would say.

Sian comes back from her course and says it was great - not too weird.  She was a bit worried that it may have attracted a few nutcases, the kind of people who tell you what the trees are whispering about.  Apparently, her animal guide is a rabbit.

March 20

Christopher, Elizabeth's son, has been doing some gardening for us for the past week. The grass at the back of the house had become seriously overgrown. It actually looked very pretty, especially in the early morning and it has attracted a lot of bird life, but it does need to be cut.

There is a lot of uncertainty at school as the president's message about closing schools needs to be verified. Ellie's school sends out a message that they are closing at lunchtime and work will be given to the pupils to complete at home. I have already made Whatsapp groups with my classes and I give them work to do as I am sure many of them will not come to school next week.

However, in general, I find everyone very laid back about things. We see people in the UK and USA rushing around panic buying, but it is not something the average person can really afford to do here.

We have banned my dad from watching the news as he gets very anxious, worrying if everyone is OK. We don't have television, but he does.

John finishes the work he was doing converting the khaya into a cottage and is very pleased with his effort. However, the lady who is going to live in it approaches him to ask if he can hammer a few nails into the wall for her to hang her curtains from. This is not something to ask someone who has spent the last month repairing and painting all the rooms. In reply, John says he will nail her to the wall if she even thinks of doing such a thing. Instead, he will put up a curtain rail.

March 19

Educating Elizabeth on the coronavirus is proving difficult.  She believes it has been brought to Zimbabwe by the Chinese and so the obvious solution is to send them all packing. I try to tell her that it is useless as once the virus is here, it will spread on its own.  I make up a bottle of disinfectant for cleaning the counters and tell her how she must wash her hands when she arrives for work and wash her hands when she gets home, but it doesn't look as though my words are going far.  In many ways I feel that Elizabeth's rather haphazard cleaning routine may actually save our lives in the long run as we have probably built up a bullet proof immunity to most diseases as a result.

As expected, late in the evening, the government does a u-turn and a message, purporting to be from Manangagwa, is dinging from phone to phone at a rate of knots: school will end nine days earlier than planned on Tuesday, 24 March.  There is some doubt as to whether it is true or not and really the message should come through the Ministry of Education but, like most things, in Zimbabwe, it doesn't follow the usual path.

There is a second coronavirus victim: a well known journalist who has just returned from New York.  He has been admitted into Wilkins Hospital in Harare.  God alone knows what the conditions there are like.

March 18

It is Sian's 15th birthday today and my aim is to keep it 'corona-free'; the atmosphere of certain doom we are all living under is enough to deal with.  People love digging up every single End Of The World prophecy that they have ever come across from Nostradamus to Revelations to some book some guy wrote ten years ago in which everything we are experiencing now is predicted. 

The Environmentalists are saying the virus is the world fighting back and the conspiracy theorists are saying it is biological warfare created by China to fight the US - or was it created by the US to fight China?  Whatever the case may be, it is great to see how quickly the world heals itself when humans aren't allowed outside.  Rivers and oceans are cleaner, pollution levels drop considerably and wild animals are spotted in town.  One almost hopes we will be wiped off the surface of the Earth.

In the afternoon, I take Sian horse-riding.  The stables are on the road I used to travel every day as a child, going to school and back from How Mine.  I have this very strong urge to just carry on past the stables and drive all the way to the mine, which is 30 kilometres from Bulawayo.  I have this strange feeling I would find my mum in the kitchen at home, busy baking or cooking and my dad would come home from work, looking like he did then, with a real spring in his step as I always remember him.  Wouldn't it be lovely to just drive back into the past, all the way into 1988?  My sister would be lying on her bed, listening to Madonna on her walkman and my younger sister would be playing with dolls or dressing up.  I can see it all so clearly: the pictures I had on the wall in my bedroom and my typewriter that my dad bought me in an auction.  In 1988, I was one year younger than Sian is now.  I wonder how much she will remember of her childhood?

Sian gets a set of second-hand Folio Society books by Jane Austen and is thrilled.  I am so glad that she loves literature.  She has just finished The Great Gatsby, which is perhaps my favourite book. She wanted old books particularly as she likes that 'vintage' look.

March 17

Zimbabwe has its first confirmed coronavirus case.  The victim is announced as a 'caucasian man from Victoria Falls, recently returned from the UK'.  There are two things I think about this: one is that I hate that word, 'caucasian'; it sounds too much like 'crustacean'.  Secondly, is there any relevance in the fact that he is white?  The cynical side of me thinks this is the government's ploy to suggest that the virus is brought in by whites.  Zimbabwe's defence minister was recently quoted as saying that the virus was God's punishment to the West for placing sanctions on Zimbabwe.  The fact that it started in China, probably Zimbabwe's only ally, was completely glossed over.

Late in the evening, the government declares the coronavirus a national emergency and puts in place some very basic measures.  Groups and gatherings are to be limited to 100 people.  To my knowledge, it only takes two people for the virus to be spread.  Schools are to stay open until the end of term, although they are usually a hotbed of viruses at the best of times.

March 16

Molly cancels her booking on booking.com, but in the evening I get a Whatsapp message from someone called Miss Molly, asking about accommodation for the same date that she has just cancelled.  Her profile picture, if it is indeed her, shows a young woman with the kind of beauty that is undercut by a hardness of character. I imagine she is totally self-absorbed: there is no other way to interpret the dramatic pout and the steely eyes.  I very much doubt she has an 18 year old son and feel it is much more likely that she is meeting someone for a secret rendezvous.

'That's it,' says John when I show him the picture.  'I knew she was up to something. Tell her to take her lil gathering somewhere else.  We're closed.'

I fear Miss Molly will be the last enquiry we have for a long time.

Today I began a meditation course called 21 days of Abundance with Deepak Chopra.  So far so good.

March 15

We are all tired after the party and glad when everyone goes home.  In the late afternoon, I am driving back home from dropping off one of Sian's friends when I see my elderly 'Eastend' friend walking along the road and so I offer her a lift home.

'Did those people find ya?  Those people who was looking for ya house the ovver day?'

'Were they English people?'

'Yeah, I fink so.  They was driving along Limerick and said they was looking for a fatched 'ouse.  I said to them, "Well, I can't fink as where you're looking for so they took out this piece of paper and I saw your name and then the penny dropped.'

'Thanks, yes, they did arrive.'

'Oh, that's good, they might still be drivin' around looking for you overwise.'

Back home, we have received a booking for next weekend from someone called Molly.  She sends a message asking if it's OK if her 18 year old son stays.  I write and say it's fine, but he has to pay.  A number of people recently have thought our charge was for the whole cottage, not per person.

We then get another message: 'We'd like to have a lil get together.'

'I have a bad feeling about this one,' says John, who has a natural mistrust of people who use the word 'lil'.  I can already see that he planning to put her off in some way.  I don't know if we should be having people to stay anyway. Aren't we putting ourselves at risk?

March 14

Today, we have Sian's birthday party.  She assured us that she just wanted a small gathering of friends and then announced that there would be nine girls staying the night! They are going to camp outside, sleeping under the stars.  It all sounds great, but it rained yesterday and there are a few black clouds around today.  

Fifteen year old girls are vastly different to eleven year olds though and I like the fact that they don't want John or I around, or at least for very long.  Sian has strung fairy lights in the trees and there is music and raucous laughter and they all seem to be having a good time.  I am quite glad there is no one in the cottage tonight.

Ellie has her friend over and they do a fashion show for me and I have to pick who is the best.  It's very sweet.  Sometimes I feel bad because I find birthday parties difficult and stressful.  The house seems to be invaded by hordes of uncontrollable children and I just seem to stand about, shouting instructions about wet swimming costumes and where in the house they are not allowed (mostly everywhere) and what they can't do (mostly everything).  To calm down, I tell myself that one day the girls will have left home, one day they will have parties that John and I won't be invited to, one day I will  miss the chaos.

March 13

Oh dear, it's Friday the 13th.  What could do wrong? Firstly, the people booked to arrive today have had to cancel their flight.  Fifteen minutes before they were due to board, the father of the young girl coming to play in the ITF matches, received an email to say that the tournament had been cancelled due to the coronavirus.  Despite being assured throughout the day that this wouldn't happen, there appeared to be a change of mind at the last minute.  The man is very apologetic and asks if he can compensate us.  The thought is tempting, but we tell him that it is not his fault and we fully understand.

Life has suddenly taken on this strange, uncertain feel.  Everything looks the same, but beneath is this current of anxiety.  The Western press is full of horror stories and statistics.  In the afternoon, I collect Ellie from hockey practice; life at school appears to be continuing just as normal.

In the evening, I do a session of yoga which gives me a huge boost of energy.  I find that I am whizzing around, getting things done - this is very different to my usual Friday night when I am half dead.  Around 9pm, I fetch Sian and her friend from youth group.  Sian is horrified that I am wearing my dressing gown, although I don't see the problem as long as I don't get out of the car.  I always remember a girl at school whose father used to drive her to school every day in his pyjamas. One day, the car broke down and she was mortified when he got out in his dressing gown and slippers and prepared to look at the engine.  It's funny what you remember from your school days.

The yoga seems to have done something to my brain as I can't sleep at all.

March 12

Our visitors leave today, but not before buying a copy of This September Sun and announcing their good news - they got engaged last night at the Bulawayo Club.  Let's hope that their stay with us pushed them towards this moment of matrimonial bliss.

The coronavirus seems to have stepped up a notch in Europe and we are wondering if our guests will actually arrive tomorrow.  More than that, we are worried about our own holiday plans and whether we will be able to fly as airports appear to be closing throughout the world. Zimbabwe continues to assert that there are no positive cases of the virus in the country.

March 11

It is our guests' last day in Bulawayo so they go to a farm on the outskirts of Bulawayo where the lady lived as a teenager.  She had a party there once and painted the inside of one of the buildings with bright colours and strange designs (It was the 1970s, after all).  Nothing, she discovers, has changed; all her weird murals are still there.

The father of the girl who is booked to stay with us at the weekend has asked if we can pick his daughter and her tennis coach up from the airport on Friday morning.

March 10

When I come back from school, a girl comes round for an English lesson and then I fetch Ellie from school.  I then receive a message from John asking me to tidy the cottage as he forgot to do it before leaving for work and he didn't ask Elizabeth to do it. In the midst of this, I try and cook dinner and end up boiling a pan dry.

I receive a message from Econet saying: Call your loved ones with Econet Voice Care and get free medication as an added benefit. I doubt Econet see the humour in this message, that calling your family results in you needing medical assistance.

We have a very good booking or the weekend.  A 14 year old girl is coming to play in an international tennis tournament being held in Bulawayo.  She is travelling with her coach and they have booked for nine days.

March 9

Our guests go for scrambled eggs this morning and John feels this as a challenge.  They want to see where his weakness lies.  Tomorrow, they may go for poached eggs - who knows? I hope they don't as I melted the egg poacher by putting it on the stove with no water in the pan.

John has been looking into doing a piano tuning course online, but he cannot get a reply from the person who runs it.  In a fit of desperation, he googles the man's name and finds that the body of a man with the same name was found decomposing in a car in an airport in Chicago.  This may account for the lack of response.

March 8

I wake up tired and cranky.  John is already up and making breakfast for our guests.  He tells me to go back to bed, but I cannot go back once I am up.

It's one of those catch up days of laundry, sorting through things that seem to accumulate during the week and, every teacher's nightmare, marking.

While I am hanging out the washing, one of the guests appears and says that they don't want the cottage cleaned today as his partner has hurt her back and they are just going to spend the day at home. That's a relief.

In the afternoon, I go and see an elderly friend of mine.  Ever since I was young, I seem to have had elderly friends. Perhaps this is something to do with the fact that I got on well with my grandmother.  This woman is in her eighties and very sweet.  She reminds me of my mother as she has a cake waiting and after tea we stroll around the garden, discussing flowerss.  It's hard because it reminds me of Sunday afternoons at my parents' house.  My mum had always made something and we would sit on the veranda and talk about plants and people and life in general.  I suppose it reminds me that I don't have that home to go to any more.

The visit also reminds me that there are so many lonely people in Bulawayo.  My fault is that I get far too caught up with so many things that could just be put aside.  I need to put people first and make the time to go and see them.  A visit to an elderly person can really cheer them up.

March 7

I am up early and off with Sian to Sports Day at school.  I leave John to make breakfast for our guests who tell him that breakfast has a high rating on our booking.com page.  We did not know this.

I come home, tired and grumpy. Sian assures me there is plenty of tea and I can watch Poirot to my heart's content. I sit and finish a book I have been reading.  

John says the breakfast went well as they both wanted 'hard' fried eggs.  They have gone off to Matopos for the day. The lady took her partner to see the house they lived in in Richmond and was not impressed.  Richmond, Bulawayo is a far cry from Richmond, London.  They described our house as an oasis.  That's reassuring.

March 6

It's a busy day.  I take my dad to his doctor to give him a more thorough check up.  His right eye has gone black and purple and it looks as though he has been in a big fight.

I am invited to an event at the Art Gallery.  In the invitation, I am referred to as a Woman of Spirit.  This has to be interesting.  However, I can't spend too much time there and end up missing the presentation which highlights certain things going on in Bulawayo, such as Drums of Peace and the Matopos hut painting.

In the afternoon, I have Open Day at school until five o'clock.  When I get home, our guests have arrived.  They are very friendly and chatty; she was born in Bulawayo and left here in 1982. He is English. She says she wants to show him where she grew up and says this will be the last time she visits.  I wonder if people from other countries have this longing to go back home that people in Africa feel?  I once met an elderly French lady who had grown up in Egypt and had left when the King was overthrown.  She told me she had been homesick all her life and I remember at the time thinking how sad that must be.  This are anxious to cancel a booking they have to stay in Matopos, but the internet is playing up and they can't log on.  This is typical; if no one stays, the wi-fi works perfectly.

Sian and her friend go out to youth group.  Ellie and I fall asleep on my bed and John is relegated to sleeping in Ellie's room.  Whatever happened to the wild days of my misspent youth?  I can't get past nine o'clock these days.

March 5

One of the hardest things in life is watching your parents gets old. My dad was a very keen athlete in his younger years, even holding the British schoolboy record for the mile at one time. In his early twenties, he was diagnosed with a condition called ankylosing spondylitis which caused his spine to fuse.  However, despite the doctor's predictions that he would be completely bent over by the time he was forty, my dad has done quite well, although he is stooped over. His sport in many ways saved him.

The last few years have been hard.   He suffers from deep depression and has become very slow and shows little interest in anything.  Towards lunchtime, I get a phone call from Elizabeth to say my dad has fallen over whilst cleaning the pool and has cut his head on the wall.  I go home and find him covered in blood so I take him to an emergency clinic that his doctor recommends.

There, the doctor puts four stitches in his head and two in his arm.  I am not impressed with the way my dad is treated, especially once they have numbed the area.  I find the doctor very rough and quite sloppy during the procedure.

He tells me that if he knew that being a doctor was going to be like this, he would never have become one.  'If I had my life again,' he says, 'I would have done something else.'

'Why is that?' I ask, slightly concerned that this man is stitching up my dad's head whilst telling me he doesn't like his job.

'I thought I was going to get lots of money and drive a nice car.  But I got none of the above.'  He shakes his head. 'None of the above at all.'

'It's the social life,' says the nurse, turning to me with  a resigned expression.  'There's no social life at all.'

'And by the time you get to being a well-respected doctor, you're too old,' continues the doctor.  'Far too old to ski.'

Dad's head is wrapped up in a huge bandage and we leave as soon as possible.  We are told to come back in a week's time to take the stitches out but I am already planning to go somewhere else.

March 4

John has been working flat out, renovating someone's servants' quarters.  'Servants' quarters' sounds like such a colonial description.  In Zimbabwe, they are colloquially referred to as the khaya.  The majority of houses have a khaya in which the maid or gardener, or sometimes both, live. Traditionally, they are cramped, squat, gloomy places with small, high windows and poor ventilation. Working on his own, John has scrubbed the place clean, removing years of dirt, grease and grime, painted it and installed a modern toilet and sink.  At the end of every day, he is really exhausted. 

Sian and I come home late, 7pm, as we were at the inter-house gala at school and find that someone had made a last-minute booking, came to the house, rang the bell, hooted and then gave up and drove away.  They have sent us a biting message through booking.com, saying they are hoping they won't be charged. This is the first time this has happened.  John can't understand why he didn't hear the hooting, especially as it usually sends the dogs nuts and they race down to the gate in a mad frenzy.  I check my phone and see three missed calls.  

We apologise, but secretly we are quite glad we did not have to deal with a guest tonight, we are both so tired.

March 3

The day is overcast and drizzly.  Towards lunchtime, the rain gathers momentum and it rains all afternoon and into the evening.  I pick up Ellie from school and we go home and have a cosy afternoon of reading, writing and making forts.  Ellie used to stay every single afternoon at school until 5pm, but now she has learnt not to sign up for too many things.  Ironically, school has killed her interest in sports she was quite good at, like swimming, because they were too competitive and, to use Ellie's words, 'full of screaming teachers' trying to get the best out of the children.

Zimbabwean schools take sport very seriously.  To a large extent, it has always been that way, but the situation is exacerbated by parents who want value for money.  If their child is at school the entire day, then their money has been well spent.  Playing, reading, leisure time in general, is no longer valued.  In fact, it is almost feared. 'Go and study.' 'Stop playing around.' 'You are a naughty child who just wants to mess around.  Go and sit in your room and read through your books.' One of the girls I teach told me of a friend of hers whose mother gets him up at three o'clock in the morning and sits next to him whilst he studies. 

Sitting at your desk, staring at books, does not, unfortunately, make you a learner.  You can, perhaps, learn to recite a few things off pat, but chances are the information will not stick.  It is hard to explain to many parents, but playing, rolling around in the mud and climbing trees is probably the best thing for your child to be doing.  Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing.  Lie on the grass under a tree and watch the way the shadows fall. How do you explain this to parents who are hoping their children will one day become a doctor and provide them with a one-ticket out of Zimbabwe?

March 2

We have some people arriving on Friday for a week.  They booked a while ago and have sent us numerous emails about the money situation here. I send them a long message, trying to explain our peculiar situation.  We used to use US$ which got replaced by an invented currency called 'the bond'. It is totally worthless, although the government did at one time try to convince everyone that it was on a par with the US$.  It was then made illegal for anyone to trade in the US$, then it was OK for certain businesses, like tourist operators, to charge in foreign currency, and now everyone is back to quoting in dollars, even if payment is made in bond. It's all very complicated!

We receive information from booking.com about the coronavirus. If anyone has recently been to China and they feel unwell, they should self-quarantine for two weeks. I don't find this particularly helpful. I can't imagine what we would do if we had someone stay who suddenly fell ill.  Who is expected to look after them? Can we refuse to accept visitors who have recently been to China? What about the other countries where the virus has spread to? I don't like the fuss concerning the virus purely because I feel it feeds it. Whatever you concentrate on, grows. However, at the same time, one cannot be oblivious to the threat it poses.

March 1

Despite going to bed late last night as we had Ellie's birthday party, I am awake at 6am and spend a quiet hour or two working on my novel, The Dying of the Light.  My trip to Egypt reminded me of the fact that in my heart of hearts, I am a writer.  I love teaching; I enjoy interacting with my classes and all the deep and meaningful discussions we have, but I am not content with only being a teacher.  My second novel, All Come to Dust, is due to be published this year - eleven years after This September Sun.  I cannot, I say to myself, leave it another eleven years before The Dying of the Light is published.  Setting aside the time to write is difficult though when you have a full-time job, two school-going children, an aged parent and you live in Zimbabwe.  I have gone back to waking up early to write.  It's hard at first, but I am always glad I did it.  It gives my day a strong sense of purpose.

Three of Ellie's friends stayed the night last night.  Two of them are picked up on time, but one seems destined to stay here forever.  At last, a brother arrives to fetch her.  It turns out there is no parent at home as both are in South Africa.

I have given up bread for Lent.  How this will help anyone else, I don't know, but hopefully I might lose some weight.  

John finally got the pool sparkling blue and ever since the weather has been grim - cold and grey.  

Sian comes home from Harare where she was taking part in a gala and waterpolo matches.  John actually lights a fire in the grate in the lounge and we watch Murder in Mesopotamia. Poirot has become our family escape.

I am glad no one stayed this weekend.  It was nice to have Ellie's party without walking on eggshells, wondering if we were disturbing anyone. It is nice to relax in our home.

We are all in bed by 8.30pm.