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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Only 3 more heart-and-lung-fitness sessions to go and I don't think I'll be at the last one as I'll be Laura-sitting. It's on 23 December.

It's been quite good fun, going to the gym, and I've got to know a few people with similar conditions to mine. On the whole, they are a friendly bunch, though Kenny is only just coming out of his shell and Douglas doesn't speak. Ron never looks at you when he's talking but, if you can forgive that, he's quite pleasant.

Mary, Jean and Barbara work "in tandem". They do every exercise together, pace each other and time each other. Brenda is quite a lot older and walks with a stick. She tries to do the workouts but it's a struggle for her and she has a helluva job...

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I was thinking, today, about Aunt Emmie and Uncle Vic. It came about in a round-about way. Someone on the radio mentioned Halstead, in Essex, and I immediately though of Vic who was brought up there and, inevitably, thoughts of Auntie Em followed.

My aunt and uncle lived in Monkseaton, in Northumberland, about a mile from the seafront at Whitley Bay. It was a lovely area in the 40s and 50s when I used to stay with them every Summer. At the end of the road on which they lived, Deneholm, were fields of wheat and across the road were acres of allotments, the railway line to Blythe (where Uncle Vic was a Tax Inspector) and a few tree-lined avenues then the beach and the North Sea. Whitley Bay's beach was a clean curve of golden sand...

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