In which the carers get their booster appointment

By email. I didn't know that I had been recognised nationally as an unpaid carer, but I certainly do caring, both paid and unpaid, so I'm not going to argue! It's more than six months since my second jab/jag.

The children I look after on Thursdays hadn't had enough sleep last night. In between being quite pleasant and playing with me, they were really quite unpleasant. Now I had an aunt Jan who looked after me when I was tiny (my mother had had another baby quite soon after me, who was premature and vulnerable). Jan emigrated to Glasgow, then Toronto, Canada in the late 1960s. My other primary carer, apart from my mother, was a wonderful person called Larky, who died when I was five. (My mother had had one more baby by then, and another one was due any minute). The next carer was called Mo. Although she was lovely, and had a great sense of humour, I took a deep dislike to her because she wasn't my mother, nor my aunt, and she definitely wasn't Larky. Apparently I was once so horrible to her that I made her cry. I was about six at the time.

There were a series of others that I don't remember quite so well: 'Nasty Mary' who went to Lourdes and came back with a million bottles of sacred water; Anorexic Eva, who was once seen to eat a turkey rissole; Mari Carmen and Elena, the Basque Separatist sisters and their Mauritian gynaecologist boyfriend Selva (I never did work out which of the sisters he was 'seeing').

Is this payback time for me, for all the times I taunted the nannies and caregivers? No, I don't cry now. I understand that no one can take the place of beloved Mummy. Not even grandmothers come close to it. It's really, really hard, especially when parents are working from home upstairs.

I'm all done in now. I've also been packing up for my stall; loading the car; unloading, as well as all the walking between home/town/the other valley. Supper was a souffle omelette (made by me) and a salad (Steve).