It's all over, bar the shouting, and I'm still fairly fit and reasonably well. I can't tell you what a relief that is.

I've never been a hypochondriac, in fact I've been too much the other way for my own good. Until my blood pressure started to shoot through the roof I doubt if I saw my GP more than once every 5 years. I've always been the sort to shrug things off and tell myself it's nothing. It used to work, too. Now, of course, I've had to come to terms with the fact that I have a health problem but, being stubborn as I am, I'm damned if it's going to rule my life completely. I was scared about Christmas though, having been ill for the last 2.

Anyway, I was up at 8 on Christmas morning opening presents with Nik...

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My aunt Elsie was a lovely person. She never married but she wasn't at all "spinsterish" and she was the nearest thing to a grandma I ever knew. She was my mother's oldest sister, 13 years older than Mum, and had been a substitute mother to her after their own mother, my grandmother, died when Mum was only 14 years old.

Auntie Elsie wasn't, actually, called Elsie at all. Her names were Esther Alice Mary but her father said she looked like his sister, Elsie, so she was known as Elsie from babyhood. As an older woman she was rather plump and cuddly, kind and good-natured but always ready with a sharp word if she felt you had stepped out of line. She was the one you could go to, as others went to their grandmothers, when...

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My dad met Ron in 1935 when they both worked at British Celanese in Spondon, Derbyshire. Three years later, dad was Ron's best man when he married Dorothy. My mum and Dorothy became firm friends.

Ron and Dorothy had a daughter, Maureen, in 1939 but then the world went crazy and in 1941 Ron, who was by then in the army, was sent to fight the Japanese in Burma. He had been gone 3 months when his son, Alan, was born. This poor child was to contract meningitis at the age of 6 months, lived through the illness but was left in a vegetative state and died in 1944, aged 3. Ron never saw his son and could not be there when his wife went through a breakdown due to grief and loss.

Ron came home in 1946 and his 2nd daughter,...

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It's December 19th and, so far, I'm fairly well. I've been a bit more tired for the last week and I've got a lot of cattarrh but I'm not ill.

It may sound mad but I've been a bit scared for the last couple of weeks and I know Nik has. Last year I went down with the exacerbation, which turned into pneumonia, on Nik's birthday, December 10th, and completely missed out on Christmas (in bed, semi-conscious) until I ended up in hospital on January 8th as I was close to snuffing it. The year before I went down with what I thought was 'flu, though it was probably the COPD starting, just a week before Christmas and was ill until the New Year.

Now, I'm using my inhalers and exercising with my portable oxygen cylinder like...

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I don't know why but, at Laura's school, only the infants do a Christmas play. The juniors give a carol service/concert at St Mary's, the parish church.

St Mary's is very pictureque. It stands on a sandstone cliff beside Lymm Dam, our local lake and beauty spot, and it's surrounded by the small graveyard with ancient headstones. Next door, on the other side, is the Church Green pub - now an exclusive, expensive but very visit-worthy eating place.

Here's the church. Aren't I lucky to live half a mile away from that?

The only problem with St Mary's is, it's always cold inside....

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