You didn't hear from me yesterday because my WiFi took a break. It took me a while to realize it and when I did, I blamed Rogers because in January they suspended me too early although I had cancelled the suspension when my ship was damaged and the cruise truncated. I thought R had gotten the date mixed up again. Well, good comes out of most things. (Do you believe that?) While I lay awake from 2 till 4 a.m. I went through three months' of DayTimer pages, taking notes on what I still had to do - something to calm me down - hah! But organized.

Yesterday I hand-wrote a note to a friend who is dying, in palliative care, or so I thought, and me without a car and too busy to visit. So I wrote a leave-taking note with my good wishes and praise for the life he has lived. Both of us, I said, are departing, not sure when/if we'll return.

My tenses were wrongl My friend died five days ago. His widow will receive my note - not quite sympathy, not optimistic, but very positive. It is what it is. I am making plans for when I get back but whatever happens is okay. I called this trip my bucket list when I first read about it, and if it is my final drop in the bucket, it's okay. That's one of the nice things about being old. It's okay.

February was the coldest February on record here, and I was out walking (getting lost, as is my wont) on the coldest day, all the while checking the temperature in the southern hemisphere where I might have been and will be soon, God willing. The high today as I write this, BTW, in Singapore is 32 Celsius and the low 25.

I kept busy, though. Polllyanna, that’s me. As I write this, I am the closest I have been for several years to selling a new book. In the olden days, my golden days, I used to submit an outline and one or two chapters, get a contract, an advance and a deadline and go away and write a book – a book a year. One year I wrote three because my daughter Kate was getting married and I needed the money. It only got complicated when I had to do the promotion with three different publishers and I was in competition with me. However, the subject matter of each book was different, so I fell on different pages of the newspaper.

So far in this new, strange world of publishing, I have been dancing a slow gavotte with a senior editor (I hope he’s senior!), advance and retreat, advance and retreat: I advance, he retreats. I’m supposed to get word today, yea or nay. Well, see, if I had gone away in January as originally planned, this would not have happened, although I’m not sure yet what has happened.

So this was the month that was, whatever it was. So often - don’t you find? - that you don’t get the flavour of the month until it has passed and then you look back and see how it was. As I said, February was the coldest month. Is that all?

This was/is my generic letter for the month that I write for my computer-illiterate friends but I decided to enter it as my blog because I am late for the pool. It's already 6:05 a.m. and I am still dry.

Anon, anon.....