How long are you going to live?

There's a delightful new test doing the rounds which you can try to get the answer. This is what you do:

Cross your legs, while standing.

Sit down on the floor without touching anything at all, legs still crossed.

Rise again, without touching anything (including the floor).

That's it.  Deduct a point out of ten every time you wobble or reach out to touch anything. Apparently 0-3 points and you're in trouble. You can find this on YouTube, and see an athletic young man smilingly sinking, then rising again like Venus from the foam. I suspect he's been practising.

Gentle readers, I tried this. I wobbled, I touched everything in sight, and ended up more or less like an upturned beetle, limbs waving helplessly. According to this test, I'm already dead. I suspect that all over the country, there are other poor souls similarly placed, floundering helplessly on a thousand bedroom floors before trotting off to put their affairs in order.

Do try it and let me know how you get on. 

An anniversary

Twenty-five years ago today, my husband died. We have marked it by sending flowers to his grave (sadly, too far for us to travel), and by thinking about him.

One of the many hard things about losing a partner is that there is only one of you left to hold all those memories that were once shared. Here, just for him, are just a few of the things I remember:

The way you wooed me with a heart-shaped Valentine arrangement of fresh snowdrops, sent through the post.
How soon afterwards we spent Easter in the Yorkshire Dales, and you wrote me a poem afterwards.
How we married just five months to the day after our first date, which shocked my poor grandmother.
Our 2000 mile honeymoon round Europe in your leaky MG.
The hours we spent gazing in sheer astonishment at our first baby, because we simply couldn't believe we had produced this perfect, home-made human being.
The way you put up with my moods.
That catastrophic elderflower wine (what was that dark cloud that formed in the middle of the jar? In the end, we had to mix it with lemonade to make it drinkable).
The way I put up with your insatiable need to create things, from an observatory (which took months and even nights to complete) to a completely new school (which took years, and which is now flourishing).
Your passion for teashops and curries (not necessarily together).
And perhaps most of all, your utter kindness and generosity.

Thank you. For everything.