Liverpool trip

Fate has stepped in and I'm not now going to Liverpool as my friend's son has had a serious
flood in his house, so she is going over there to help out, as they have a small baby and no hot water or electricity. She will probably have to look after her granddaughter for a couple of days, so we couldn't have done all the things we were going to do. This gives me a breathing space to make all the house-related phone calls.

She is doing her best to talk me into buying the flat next door to her, which is going for around £120,000 for a spacious 2-bed flat, which makes London prices look stupid. (Which they are, of course.) But every time I go back there, I get swamped by emotion, as she lives in a street which I often walked down with my family when I was a child, and the house I was brought up in, which my parents bought in 1949 and which they stayed in till Mum died in 1996, is just up the road. Too nostalgic. I don't think I could live amongst my old haunts again. I'd feel like a ghost of myself.