davidgillon | Well, that took longer than expected

My original plan was to be away for two or three weeks: go up the week before my brother-in-law's funeral to help with organising, then stay a week or two depending on what I could help my sister or mother with.

The funeral went fine,these things are never great, but we had a polished set of undertakers (same ones we used for my dad) and our parish priest is so good at his job he lectures at the Vatican. He was perfectly happy to do a Catholic-lite ceremony, Alan wasn't Catholic, but my sister said she needed to feel it had been 'done properly' and he wouldn't have objected. The barman at the local club was one of his drinking buddies, so afterwards almost organised itself.

Post-ceremony it was obvious that my mother's household admin (which my sister normally handles) was far enough behind I'd better stay the full fortnight to help get it caught up. Then my sister pointed out that if that meant I was planning on travelling on the 30th, then I'd be leaving the day before my mother's birthday, so I shifted my plan back a couple of days, then realised that put it pretty much into the last round of train strikes, so three weeks became four and travelling last Tuesday.

And then I woke up on Tuesday, and wondered "Why is the room spinning?" And while the dizziness wasn't so bad that I couldn't get up, I really didn't think five hours on a train while dizzy was a fun way to spend my day. So my sister had to dash down to the station for me and re-book my tickets (plus assistance) - £10 admin fee, but on their most restrictive (aka cheapest) fare that didn't seem too bad. Annoyingly I'd probably have been okay to travel by late afternoon, though admittedly I did sleep an extra six hours or so during the day. As inner-ear bugs go it was a fairly mild one, though I was still vaguely feeling it right through until Sunday.

So I ended up coming back last Thursday, for 29 days away in total.

Which is a lot.