I had another difficult night as far as sleep went, and it wasn’t half a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning, but after breakfast and a shower (I have one once a year whether I need it or not) by 10:00 I was at my (or rather, Marianne’s) desk ready to work.

There’s the third part of the radio programmes to do and I was planning on doing something on “who can check your identity”. For once though, the thoughts ran freely (not quite sure why) and by 14:00 I’d done a mere 3000 words on the subject.

That was the cue for shopping. First port of call was at the bank where I handed over Marianne’s death certificate and they promptly closed her account. and it is indeed as I feared – no life assurance policies, no burial policies, not a trace of anything else. Ahhh well – you live and learn. And I thought that I had learned enough by now, but you would never have guessed.

After the food shopping I called again at this electronics shop in the neighbourhood. Here I had another lucky find – two packs of 2×12-volt MR16 LD light bulbs – reduced for quick sale at €10 the pack. I know that I can but them at €3:99 each but the ones I get are rated at 1.2 watts – these are rated at 2.4 watts.

You might be thinking that that’s not very bright, but you wuld be surprised. The “watts” is quite a misleading measurement as it relates to the amount of current consumed. And in a traditional light bulb, much, if not most, of the energy is wasted as heat, as anyone who has touched an incandescent, or a halogen, light bulb will tell you. LEDs are quite cool even when they are lit, indicating that almost nothing is wasted. LEDs generally give out about 5 times the lumens per watt that an incandescent gives out, and while that might sound not an awful lot more (2.4 watts x 5 compared to, say 40 watts) the light from an LED is much more focused.

Anyway, I digress. Back here I carried on with my magnum opus and by the time I’d finished it (23:00 with an hour out for tea) I’d done over 3700 words on indentity checks, followed by over 2700 on “who can enter your house”. I really was having a good day today.

As for tea, it was gorgeous. I might have mentioned that I made a potato pie last night while the pizza was cooking, and there’s half of the aforementioned. Add to that a heap of peas and carrots in butter and mint and it really was the most delightful meal that I’ve had for quite a while (excepting anything that Liz has cooked, of course). I’m going to have to watch myself here – I’m becoming far too civilised. At this rate I shan’t want to go home.

In other news, I’ve been invited by the Scientologists to go to watch a film at their headquarters. All to do with self-assertiveness and taking control. Hardly the sort of thing that Scientologists are famous for, of course. I wonder if there’s anything in this film about the use of pick-axe handles? They are always good for self-assertiveness and taking control.

And finally – “hooray” … ed – they say that retail therapy is always good for the soul when one is suffering from a little depression. For me, music is the key to my state of mind (provided that it isn’t The Thieving Magpie (La Gazza Ladra) by Marillion of course) and I have been feeling considerably depressed just recently, as you know. Consequently when Amazon announced a special promotion of 2 CDs for £9:00, over 1000 albums on offer, many of which I owned on plastic and haven’t yet replaced, well, I rather pushed the boat out a little and now I’m … errr …£63:00 (plus postage to Belgium) lighter.

But there’s some cracking stuff in there and I don’t consider it money wasted at all. I need cheering up right now. I’ve had a difficult Spring.

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