It was on Palm Sunday last year that the water came through our dining room ceiling. I approach the day anew with some trepidation. The weather continues savage and no relief is forecast for the coming week, but at least Edinburgh is dry.

We have taken to going to Mass at Our Lady Star of the Sea in Leith by car because of the awkwardness of getting to our local cathedral – I have to drive my husband up there, then come back and park at home because there is never a parking space and then walk up myself. We take a bus home. OLSof the S is having an earlier Mass today, too early for us, so it’s back to the cathedral. It will be our first visit since the recent trouble, and therefore potentially interesting.

Great, weather-related news, though: our niece would like a few days in Strathardle right after Easter. She’s willing to shoulder the question of how’s-the-water-after-the-winter which I have been dreading. A water crisis I could still deal with (just about) but my husband, even in his glory days, gets very disagreeable in such circumstances (where gallows humour would actually help). Dealing with water, disagreeableness, and anxiety about his frailty all at once is what I was not anticipating with pleasure.

The water anxieties are two: one, that the pipe has frozen somewhere in the field between the house and the mains connection, and there is no water at all. That has never happened to us, in 50 years, but it does happen to people. And two, that the ends of pipes in the house have been forced apart by ice, despite careful draining, so that a flood results when the water is turned on. That has happened twice in those 50 years. Here is my account of the more recent event.

If our niece is willing to take on those anxieties, it means that I will have nothing to worry about except the routine worries, when we finally go ourselves. Bliss!

I’ve had a lot of trouble with spam lately – some have crept through Blogger’s defences, as you may have noticed. I hope I’ve caught and deleted them all. There is a huge additional volume which doesn’t get through because they are aimed at older posts and therefore moderated. But it still takes me time to go through and delete them.

A blogger I was reading recently said she had reluctantly set her system to exclude Anonymous comments. But I really can’t do that – not just for your sake, Ron, but because a number of other good comments come Anonymously. See yesterday for examples.

All well otherwise. Cries for help from the Toshiba-user are definitely diminishing in number. He successfully saved a couple of documents yesterday, although I don’t think he has yet loaded one on his own.

And although I didn’t get as much second-sleeve done on the Relax  as I would have hoped, I did do enough that I think I’m still on schedule to finish on Tuesday, block on Wednesday, take to Loch Fyne on Friday. (Lent is nearly over!)

No news from Rome. They probably don’t have access to wi-fi.  I texted both Helen and Archie yesterday, and have had no response. I’m not reeeely worried, but…