Monday 8 December

It’s been a very chilly few days recently in London with icy winds and low temperatures. And because things never happen at opportune times, it was last Wednesday that my neighbours noticed a smell of gas and called out the gas board to check. So on Wednesday evening, I arrived home to find much of the pavement outside my street front door dug up, a team of British Gas workmen digging more holes, and the gas cut off! On Thursday morning they came and turned off the supply in my flat for safety reasons, gave me a telephone number where I could ask for a temporary electric hotplate to cook on, and cheerfully said that it could be some days before the gas supply could be restored!

That night a friend of mine who had just arrived in the UK from Saudi Arabia came round to see me. Having been used to nighttime temperatures in the mid 20s, he found London distinctly cold and my flat like a fridge. He’d intended staying with me for a couple of days but stayed for an only hour before apologising and finding some other friends to stay with!

I managed to lay my hands on an electric radiator and a fan heater the following day. While these improved things no end, I could almost feel the electricity bill notching up every time I turned the fan heater on. Fortunately, on Sunday the workmen returned and announced with pride that they had isolated the leak and that it was safe to turn the gas back on. Never has that reassuring whoosh of the boiler coming on been such a sweet sound and the ease of turning on the hot water tap and hot, rather than tepid, water coming out of it been so welcome!

It’s that time of year when Elizabeth Finn Care beneficiaries receive their Christmas Hampers. After a couple of abortive attempts at delivery whilst I was out, my hamper arrived. As always, there is the excitement of opening the box and digging around in the sea of white polystyrene packing shapes to discover what goodies are lurking deep down inside. The cold weather gives it an extra frissant, and of course there is always the pleasure that getting anything brings.

My delving into the polystyrene-filled box reveals the normal eccentric mix of the really useful, the odd treat, and a selection of the bizarre and useless! The spirit of Marie-Antoinette and Paddington Bear seems to permeate the selection as cake and marmalade and jam seem to dominate. There’s some cheese and dates, a Christmas pudding, mince pies, chocolates and a bottle of wine … but what will I do with a tin of whole red peppers and the royal game soup? Or the pickles and the chutney, and the redcurrant jelly? As I ruminate over these questions whilst contemplating the After Eight cloned chocolates and the chocolate nuts packaged to look like just Brazils, I ponder how difficult it must be to please all those people who receive hampers!

Earlier in the week, I find myself being whisked off to Bedford for a meeting to try and make the Elizabeth Finn Care name better known in Bedfordshire. There’s an illustrious selection of guests from the voluntary sector there - including the High Sheriff - when it comes to talking to the group about how things went wrong for me, I find myself unusually moved by my own story and how I ended up needing help. Several times I find myself becoming tearful and emotional, however, I am reassured to get a sympathetic round of applause. I am told later that I genuinely moved some of the audience … so even the saddest of tales can produce positive results.