This is one of those moments when you want to stop time. It is halfway through the holiday and I have that distinct feeling that the damned time has run away with the circus. Or maybe the Gypsies snatched it? It is so definitively gone that I have nothing to show for it. As if it has never been here in the first place.

I was meant to write, but instead, I read. This wouldn’t have been such a tragedy if I had been just reading. But I was also wasting time: doing administrative chores, tidying up loose ends, printing, sorting, preparing a list of chattels I want to bequeath to people when I die. It may sound like a strange thought in the middle of halfterm holiday but dying is very much on the agenda – S has made an appointment with a lawyer for us to do our wills. It is tomorrow. It reminds my of my mortality and how little there is outside life and death.