Day 124 Week 17

Oh my poor friend and fellow soldier's Mum. She told me her boy didn't want to go back. What can you say? How can you comfort someone who just took her child to catch a plane to return to a war, but this time knowing all too well what that involves? I said hold on to the thought that they're not forgotten and there are thousands of us in the same boat, but in truth that doesn't help at all. She's back to crying all the time. Lots and lots of prayers that the whole thing will stop and no one else will be hurt.

Weather grim. Colleagues were talking about garden design, one being a horticultural wizard and the other wishing to design a beautiful one in her new house, and the wizard reminded the novice that she should look to where the sun fell during the day and the novice replied that she hadn't been able to, as since she'd been given the advice - the sun hadn't appeared once. We'll all be going down with SAD syndrome - maybe that's why I'm so knackered all the time. Anyway the wizard is my buddy and she's said she's going to help me put the finishing touches to my 'Japanese garden', sounds awfully glamorous.

See that all Toyotas are being recalled because of defective accelerators, sometimes they just keep getting faster and faster even when not applied, or more worryingly still, when braking. It's very serious, so far eighteen fatalities have been attributed to the condition in the US alone. At least I know C is in danger, it's the ones you don't know about which are often the most lethal.

Read that Katie Price has remarried, this time to a cage fighter and it's rumoured they celebrated their nuptials with a private audience by several artists in a strip club. Surely not. Sometimes I think the world is compartmentalised into separate mini-universes, so near and yet so totally unconnected to each other.

Had a text from H and he's loving it. Not heard from R so hope she's OK. No news from C.

Please God look after them all.

Speak soon. A soldier's Mum x