Articles by Gina

I thought looking after mum was hard, but compared to this it was a walk in the park…. 6 weeks later, the dust still hasn’t settled, but I am wading through the mounds of paperwork, and the endless phone calls, and the contents of the house, while being asked daily to make decisions that seem way beyond me…. I guess this is what it is to be in the front line… I know that some day this will all be behind me and the next chapter will be here, whatever that is… I ask only to be able to weather this with good grace, to accept the good fortune and to tread lightly through the rest… I get to sing in the St. Matthew Passion this weekend in Durham Cathedral, and the following day in the Faure Requiem in a tiny church in Swaledale, and then I go to Cairo for a week to see Pesha (if I can get my shots in time), so things will be on hold for a while. Look on the bright side…

Meanwhile, although spring showed its face briefly last week, we now have another 3 or 4 inches of snow – it’s been alternating all day between total white-out and siberian blizzards followed by brief patches of sunshine, in very rapid succession… good that yesterday I made two major dump runs, plus 15 giant bags to the local charity shop… and the friends who came to lunch today turn out to own an incinerator, so they left with two giant boxes of old paper… progress is being made. I even paid the outstanding £1000 heating bill. Plus I get to meet with lawyers and realtors later this week. Huzzah… as a friend said, “you should be so lucky, to have such problems!”