Today t'old man took advantage of the OAP special return coach fare from Leeds to Manchester and went winging his way across the pennines for a fiver to visit Bella in her recently bought house.
She is chuffed to have taken the first step on the housing ladder but is becoming dismayed at the amount of work needing doing on the 1930's house to bring it up to scratch. Windows have been replaced, electrics rewired, some plumbing adjusted and unsafe trees have been pruned. There's some plastering to be done next week before the new kitchen units can be fitted so you you can imagine the panic when she was told by one of the workmen that there are rotting joists under the kitchen floorboards
T'old man's job today is to take a look down there and reassure her that the house won't fall down around her 
I didn't feel up to making the journey so my other daughter Lulu said she would drop in to see me after her violin lesson! (she has recently took up her childhood hobby again as a form of therapy to detract from her stressful job as a senior ward manager in a NHS acute all male mental health ward).
I hadn't seen her for a week or so, so I made a nice pot of percolated coffee before we chatted about things. Me, about how I was progressing along and how I was feeling about everything, then she started opening up about her job...about the forthcoming ward restructuring, about the terrible time she had with a male nurse under her charge (who was that unbalanced he could have easily qualified as an inpatient himself) as well as unloading her anxieties about an ongoing review on her ward about a major incident which happened recently 
.
After coffee we decided to go the supermarket as we both needed to stock up and I have to take advantage of a lift whenever I can. I spent most of the time there stopping to chat with both ex colleagues and a couple of friends who were shopping who I hadn't seen for years..everyone was lovely to me and they all talked quite freely about the dreaded 'C' word...gone are the days when it was a word too ghastly to mention when everyone skirted around it embarrassingly...I even took to taking my hat off and flashing my newly grown (but still cropped) grey hair...how we all laughed 
as no-one has seen me with grey hair before, they all knew me as this ageing woman who was keen to hold on to her youth as long as she could, even if it did mean dying her hair and wearing make-up to work. It is good that I can be so relaxed about it with all these random aquaintances and I came home feeling so much better 
T'old man should arrive home in about an hour so i'll put the coffee pot on again and I guess we'll exchange notes on how 'the daughters' are going on
"how was yours"?
"yes mines OK"...........Y'know, that sort of thing.....an ordinary day in an ordinary life 
