Well. What a lot has been going on.

I’m back on Facebook, after a ten day break. But am very wary of any difficult conversations, and don’t comment nearly as much. Which is probably a good thing, but I still feel as if I’ve been bullied, which is not a good thing. The moral of this story is that I need to think more and comment less.

In October I went to UNISON Retired Members’ National Conference in Brighton. I stayed in ED’s flat, which was great, and a 20 minute walk from the Conference Centre. I went down a day earlier than everybody else, and stayed a day longer, so I could rest and sleep when I needed to. It was wonderful. I spoke to Conference (about 500 people) and successfully moved an amendment to a motion. All very exciting. And I love Brighton. Brighton Train Station has a piano for people to play, and they do! just random people! how fabulous.

But of course it was absolutely exhausting, and so I needed to sleep for most of the rest of the month.

YD is now 30 weeks and due on 5th January. She’s feeling much better, though tired, and looks fabulous. ED’s little boy is almost one year old, and what a delightful little character he is. A happy, happy child.

Hubby was 70 years old on Sunday, and his three sons organised a surprise party. They did the organising, I did the “keeping it a secret”, which was actually harder than it sounds. I didn’t actually tell any lies, but I did omit the whole truth! We met everybody (almost his entire family) at the Regency Hyatt in Birmingham, on the waterfront, and then got on the barge which took us for a three hour trip. Buffet for food, I had a fabulous cake made by an extremely talented 16-year-old, who also crochets the most amazing things and has been approached by some very big names in the entertainment industry, because she has an Instagram account (I think).

It was a wonderful, wonderful day. His family live all over the place (Brighton, Malvern, the Cotswolds, Ledbury, Dublin) and he was very surprised and delighted to see them all.

Meanwhile, Bertie the Cat has had a very nasty abscess, which manifested itself last Wednesday night. Fourth trip to the vet today for her 48-hourly antibiotic injection. Cone collar of shame. Fifth trip on Friday. It is definitely improving. We bought her a little harness so that she can go outside, but only with one of us holding on to the lead. I wipe her down with a warm damp flannel every day, and she gets brushed a lot. I make sure she gets plenty of attention and that she purrs as much as possible. Fraught though. And she hates her carrier, and the car. And of course the cone collar of shame. She loves the vets though. Doesn’t matter which one she sees. She loves them all. She just lets them clean the wound, inject her, and is extremely interested in the room (tries to jump off the examination table to explore). Bless.

So I’m very tired, in “looking after the cat” mode, and it’s time for me to stop now. For some reason it won’t let me upload any photos. Maybe I’ll try again another day and there’ll be a blog with just photos.