The saving grace of solitaire.

I'm playing lots of solitaire. It means I'm doing something, while at the same time I'm not. My mind is busy on one level but free to think on others.

Today I have been playing solitaire and listening to this and crying a bit (ok, a lot).

I had stopped crying. It was like my body had dried out. The main problem is that my brain is still not convinced that all of this is real. As my mum said this morning, it's like it happened two days ago but also two months ago.

Dad is going to be buried in the fabulously lovely Herongate Wood next week. He'd left no instructions about wheres and hows (bloody typical) so we've got him a plot by the pond where there are moorhens in spring. As the homepage says there's no need for hearses and limos and very rushed half-hour slots at the crem all of which he hated. The funny thing is until mum found the place, we had no idea it was there although we've driven along that road hundreds of times. That's rather the point I think.

We're also probably going to get him a bench in the local park. On our Saturday library trips to Chelmsford we'd park near Chelmsford Park and then walk through (therefore avoiding the multi-storey car parks which he disliked). There is a bench that we'd walk past with a plaque on it that says "In Loving Memory of Ted and Cis". Now we have no idea who Ted and Cis were, but every time we'd walk past it he'd go "Oh, I remember!". So a bench for other people to make that joke about is sodding perfect.

Everything seems to happening very fast but also very slowly. Presumably time will return itself to normal at some point. Probably when I get back to work and have just five minutes to go before my lunch break...