I'm going to have to walk 2 minutes to the lightbulb shop now.

It's 2 minutes walk back as well.

My experience is that the walk back from somewhere is always shorter than the walk there.

My experience is that it is the reverse.

However, I can gladly report that the Bijou Mini-Flatlet is now bathed in the warm glow of smouldering jazz mags a new lightbulb.

It's a bit orange.

Like peering about the place with this as my only guide.

That made my eyes go funny.

My mothers partner seems to be seriously ill - and still hasn’t sorted his will. He’s intestate. He’s staying at hers while she plays nursemaid, and he better not die in the bed I like to sleep in when I’m there. You can’t die in the house of someone who isn’t at least a beneficiary.

My dad is also very ill and being looked after at home. Indeed I visited a week earlier than scheduled to help keep an eye on him.

I fear the NHOTW has been going on long enough for this sort of thing to start happening in members' families.

I'm sorry to hear about that, Fangy.

Sorry to hear that. My own parents are having their fair share of ailments and hospital visits these days. It doesn't seem long since it was my grandparents going through these things.

Where’s my sympathy? Someone could die intestate here! I can hardly sleep for the worry of it.

FG, I’m very sorry. I’m glad you went to see him. I regret not seeing my father - I saw him about 18 months before he died, and then we weren’t in touch again. The next I heard, he’d died and it was too late.

Just a word of warning from the wise - be careful of your parents porn collection, and the possibility that some of it is homemade and stars them. Have that discussion while they’re still alive, and ask them to keep it in a clearly labelled box that you’ll know not to open.

Butterfield wrote:

It doesn't seem long since it was my grandparents going through these things.

Yes, that's the sad thing. I keep remembering how my grandad suddenly turned from patriarch to invalid in 1980, and just sort of dried up and blew away.

Good grief, my mothers partner looks like something out of Belsen. I went over there to take him some cakes and nice juices, and he was nice to me. So I know he’s ill. His greeting to me is never ‘hi’ - it’s always ‘here comes the black widow’, and he means it.

Apparently the doctor advised him yesterday to get his affairs in order. He doesn’t have the time to leave it longer.

Some relief from the gloom in the shape of an invitation to my friend's big 50th birthday bash in the autumn. Lately I've been watching a lot of feel good films on Netflix to try and cope, and unless they've lied to me, the occasion will no doubt be an opportunity to find myself in later life.

Of course, it's my friend's birthday not mine, so I'd probably be her loyal sidekick, and just be rewarded with a quirky partner of my own and a 5 second shot during the big final dance number on the streets of Bolton town centre.

Actually no, I'm the star of this show and she's the loyal best friend. But the purpose of the party is that I have to learn that her feelings and birthdays are important too.

And then we do the big dance number with us both at the front.