Friday, August 29

Naa and I left very early before Irma got up, and we left some birthday presents and cards on the breakfast table.

I had a meeting with Lasse at 9:00 and he explained how the funding he has will work. Ah ha, I said: I will talk to Nathalie and then email Erik. And I did.

I then spent the day doing a number of small, irksome but important tasks: claiming money for my Nobanet flights through M2, for example, and trying to find out what was happening with our Lynda.com subscription which is due to start on Monday.

I spent the afternoon preparing the Mobile Apps course that begins next week, and bought an ebook from O’Reilly as part of the process.

Naa and I met on the metro home, not by accident, and went to Plantagen to get some flowers. Now we are at home. I have given Irma yellow chrysanthenums, a bottle of champagne, a set of hand-creams, and the Nomination bracelet.

Tomorrow would have been Auo’s thirteenth birthday and this hangs over today. The house is not filled with celebration and laughter like in previous years. Inevitably the evening will finish with a meaningless agrument that is not about anything at all except a desperate need to find a way of offloading the stress and pain that everyone feels. Everyone will recognise it for what it is and nobody will feel bad about it in the morning.

We will have too many other things to feel bad about.