Laura's been learning the clarinet since September and she's coming on in leaps and bounds. She knows D E F G A and with those 5 notes you can play some pretty good tunes. The quality of the notes has improved in the last few weeks, too, and her playing sounds more mellow and controlled. She's chuffed to bits with herself, also, that she is learning to read music. I don't think that had occurred to her but it has now dawned on her that she knows what all those notes, rests, pauses and time signatures mean and where to apply them.

The other night she was having a little "jam session", after her formal practice, and as she tootled I realised she was playing the start of "Begin the Beguine". A bit of...

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I went to my first get-your-lungs-back-in-some-sort-of-shape exercise class today. It's at the Warrington Wolves R L F C Stadium which is massive and leases out parts of the building to the NHS, private functions, businesses etc. I'll be going on Tuesdays and Fridays until Christmas week.

Fridays it's 12 noon until 2 p.m. and I staggered in from the car park, clutching my mobile oxygen cylinder in it's smart little back pack, and sank on to a chair in the waiting area to recover. The thing is ridiculously heavy. I had parked in the designated car-park which said "For the use of NHS at Wolves patients only" but every single bay was a "disabled" one and - I'm not disabled. I resolved that, if I should get...

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Dave and Laura, the plumbers, finished the bathroom at 1.30 p.m. today, Saturday. They have done an excellent job and I can't praise them highly enough.

I used to have a champagne bath, sink and loo (leaking for the last 5 months) with dark walnut panelling, vanity unit and loo seat, champagne cabinet and shelving, biscuit-colour tiles half way up the walls and gold coloured taps and fittings. I had dark pink flotex carpet tiles on the floor. When my late husband installed the champagne suite, 27 years ago, it was the latest style. Now it looked, well, dated and dreary.

I now have a white suite, with a shower-bath (with the wide, round bit at the shower end) a power shower and a clear curved screen. There's...

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It's not been the most comfortable of weeks in fact it's been, and still is, decidedly uncomfortable. There's only one bathroom in this house and, since Monday morning, there's been nothing in it except a loo. Washing and toothbrushing has to be in the kitchen sink. Bathing and showering are impossible so it's been a strip-wash with a wet flannel - ye-e-e-e-uch!

Of course, just to make things worse, my body has had to get in on the act. In the early hours of Tuesday morning I woke up shivering under my duvet and no way could I get warm. After 2 miserable, teeth-chattering hours, during which I staggered out of bed to put my dressing gown on and flopped back under the duvet to carry on shivering, the fever broke and I started...

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They came at 8.45 this morning. The big silver-grey van parked outside my front garden and "Cyril Smith" parked his shiney black people-carrier behind it. He came up the drive first, with a booming, "Good morning." He was followed by his son (the plumber) and daughter-in-law (plumber's mate and tiler).

David, the son, is well-made and has his father's eyes. I had expected his wife, Laura, to be a large, perhaps a bit butch, woman but I was surprised to be greeted by a tall slim lady, with long dark hair, wearing very smart overalls and very nicely spoken.

There was no hanging about. First of all, huge dust sheets were laid in my hall, up the stairs and on the landing then, while "Cyril"...

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