How it is

I shall never sell or buy a house again, and that's a solemn vow. Except I'm not even sure that I'm selling or buying one right now. Nothing much is happening to indicate selling or buying, and none of this is my doing. Let's hope that my buyer is less dozy and distracted, more organised and better at communicating, when he becomes an eminent neurosurgeon than he is at buying a house he said he was in a great hurry for.....

I am assured that this period of resounding silence, with estate agents working to chivvy everyone along, and everyone (not me! I'm organised!) forgetting to send vital information before they go on holiday, or to let anyone know where they're up to, is perfectly normal. Well, there has to be a better 'normal' system than this, frankly.

Dave the Consoling Window Cleaner told me that his buyers pulled out the day before they were due to move. But on the other hand, I'm also assured that suddenly everything will happen, and that I will find myself in a flurry of intense activity and tight deadlines. Good; I look forward to it. Flurry sounds perfectly fine to me. Intense activity would be good.

Meanwhile, I behave as though it's true, that dozy Dr D is really going to come up with the goods, so my house is almost entirely packed up, except for the breakables which I am delighted to leave to the removals people. I do have clothes, bedding and other essentials to last till the hoped-for moving day, and the cats haven't been packed yet, because that particular ordeal has to be the most-dreaded element of this ghastly process, and I'm not giving them a rehearsal because I may never find Hamish again afterwards.

The Lovely Son has been and gone. The dog was in heaven; the cats had mixed views. Hamish forgot that he had ever met the Lovely Son before, and became invisible for several days; shameless Scooter emerged at mealtimes in the hope of titbits, but both made it plain that they weren't happy moggies, and that the bike in the hall was their latest object of terror.

We were happy moggies, though; we had a very easy, pleasant, distracting time together. The LS tackled some horrible little last-minute screwdriverish-type jobs for me. We dug some treasures up from the allotment to transport to Somerset. The rhubarb root (only a fragment; we left most of the three different types to continue their mission to take over the plot), has shown its enthusiasm by producing a few vigorous new leaves, bless it.

Two of the prolific little red gooseberry bushes are sitting in the yard now, their killer thorns looking perky and ready for their new home. The semi-derelict greenhouse has been tidied up for the new family who have taken over half the plot, and will probably take over the remainder when I go; meantime, I still have peas and beans, beetroot and potatoes, to gather in before handing over my key. In my head, I am planning my new garden.....

There was no way I would let the Lovely Son do any packing - his cavalier attitude and ruthless approach would be too nerve-wracking for me. Mostly, we spent time together, companionably reading, chatting or pottering about. We sat on the beach at Tynemouth, and sipped coffee from the cafe there, gazing out at a grey sea where surfers tried their best in the tiny wavelets; the Lovely Son indulged in a little nostalgia for the days of his youth when he shared a house in Whitley Bay, where he had fun. Whitley Bay nightlife is er... lively. He caught up with friends; I cooked carnivorous meals.

We tried our hand at basic Vietnamese for beginners; not an easy language, we decided, rolling our eyes a lot at the CD player and eventually giving up, defeated. The LS reckons he'll get by with pointing and smiling his way through Vietnam. Neither of us are adept foreign language-speakers. We feel cheated, somehow, of the good-with-languages gene - my mother, whose first language was French, spoke wonderful, complex, nuanced English, albeit with a strong accent, as well as fluent German, Flemish, and a smattering of Russian. We, however, are Hopeless; in particular, I am useless at grammar, which makes many of my remembered French nouns useless too.

I can, however, count from one to three in Vietnamese.....

And then he was gone. "See you in Somerset!" he said, as he pedalled off to the station.

Hamish appeared from deep cover as soon as the strange ogre with bike disappeared. To distract myself, I packed the attic wardrobe and one of the kitchen cupboards, and tried to believe that we really would be in Somerset next time we met.

Wish me luck! Muốn cho tôi may mắn.....