Dear Sarah,

What is it now? Five weeks? It's gone so quickly. Everyone continues to be very supportive, you are so missed.

Today started out ok, I mean, it's hot as fuck but I had decent night's sleep and felt pretty good this morning. It was the day that Aviva would phone about your ISA and two minutes early than booked, they did. Very sensitive about the questions he'd be asking, it all went well aside from a slightly scratchy line but the upshot is that they're happy to transfer the money with no further ado, although it will take a couple of weeks to process. So money conversation #1 went well, all good etc.

A bit later an email arrives from Jacki at Hampshire pension service about my widow's pension. On a level I understand it but they now get to pay out just about half of what they would have had to had you lived, but the main issue right now is that they've failed to process it in time for this month's payroll so I have no income at all until 31st July. I mean, I can manage but with everything else in some stage of flux or other it's going to be a month of being careful. Going forward, the relatively low amount I'll be entitled to will require some careful budgeting and judicious investment. So that was depressing.

That all sounds like I'm going to struggle financially. I won't. I know you were worried, but remember we have, sorry had, enough savings to live on for many years. So now I have enough ... etc. Plus there's to be a death grant from the pension because you drew on it for less than ten years, and it could be quite substantial so I really will be ok financially. It's just that oh, I don't know, dealing with it all was a downer as we used to say.

It's so hot.

Janet brought your freshly sorted lace stuff back this afternoon, which was lovely of her to volunteer to do and will be a blessed relief when I get round to sorting out the craft room in due course. I sent her away with the bathroom orchid to repot and rescue (having had some experience in the field). I know you loved it and loved that somehow you'd kept it alive and flowering even though your non-interventionalist approach meant it had only a passing relationship with the pot it was in and is now looking more than a little ropey despite recently flowering again. I've said it doesn't matter if the plant is beyond help now but she's going to do her best.