Practising Sunday's reading at the kitchen table, I kept arriving at the same long sentence and putting the pause in the wrong place. On paper I know what it means, out loud I make it sound like the next bit belongs to the wrong person. Drew a little line in pencil, tried again, then one of the kids asked who I was talking to. Lost my place completely. I can read a freight reference down the phone with someone shouting beside me, but give me one quiet sentence for church and I start thinking about where my tongue is. I'll try it once more when the dishwasher's finished its performance.

Mrs had an unexpected evening off and we sat through a whole programme without one of us getting a uniform ready. Nothing special, people doing up a house badly, we both knew better from our own unfinished loft apparently. She put her feet on my leg and I was made up, which sounds ridiculous after seventeen years married. Most days I get her next shift and the school messages before I get anything she's actually found funny. Didn't want to start talking about jobs that needed doing and spoil it. Then she asked about the loft herself. Fair enough, I had enjoyed a good forty minutes.

Took the youngest to the pool, the ordinary warm one, and spent half an hour catching a ball instead of counting lengths. Kept bracing for cold when I first got in, which was daft, the water was nearly bath temperature. By the time we got out my face felt hot and the skin on my fingers had gone soft and wrinkled, no trouble doing the locker key for once. I was hungry before we'd reached the car. He wanted chips and I said we'd got food at home, then sat at the lights thinking about chips myself. Shoulders pleasantly loose tonight. No temperature recorded, standards slipping.