Departure eve

I went back to London this morning, this time to Wimbledon to collect my CELTA folder. I finished the CELTA course near the end of March last year and we were told then that six months afterwards we could come back and collect our folders if we wanted them. So in September I emailed to ask if I could come and collect mine at Christmas. The college has two sites and unfortunately the site from where I had to collect my folder wasn't the one where I actually did the course, which was a shame. I would have really liked to have gone back there for a look round. Technically I could have walked to the other site, but I couldn't hang around at all in London because my flight is due to leave Heathrow very early tomorrow morning and I hadn't packed yet. There were two other things I had to do in St Albans as well.

On the way home from St Albans station I stopped at the cemetery and said hello/goodbye to Dad and also my grandparents, who are buried very close by.

Once I got back I finished off a project I had been working on for the past few days... sticking down letters and cards Dad's patients had written about and/or to him and given to the surgery when Dad retired last summer. I stuck them in the same special hardback notebook his colleagues at the surgery had all written messages in at his retirement party. A notice had gone up at the surgery asking patients for anecdotes involving Dad. Months later they were still receiving them, from irregular patients who had come in and seen the notice for the first time. The surgery had passed them all onto Dad and after reading them he had tucked them into the notebook but not stuck them down... something I'm sure he was intending to do but never got round to due to chemotherapy cycles. So I did the sticking down for him. I felt very touched and proud reading them, though very sad as well of course.