Sue returned from our Devon adventure with a nasty bug that kept her resting in bed the following day. She showed no signs of improvement overnight and, by lunchtime, she was running a temperature and had developed a hacking chest cough, which resulted in a lunchtime trip to the Walk-in Clinic in Corby.

We had taken possession of Nala at 6 am that morning, as Jamie was helping out at Meatlink for the day, which meant that we had to leave her at Willow Bank while we were in Corby. Sue was prescribed antibiotics and advised to gargle with salt water to help reduce the throat inflammation.

We picked up the prescription from a pharmacy in Harborough and arrived home to an excited and relieved Nala, who had clearly been wondering where we had disappeared to. She was collected by Jamie at 6.30 pm, bringing our temporary dog-sitting duties to an end.

Having cancelled a planned Psychic Evening with Charlotte and a U3A trip to a chilli farm, which she had been looking forward to for some time, Sue began to improve slightly after six days confined to bed. Her sister Philippa had also succumbed to the bug and had likewise taken to her bed.

By the 16th, although still suffering from an annoying chesty cough, Sue felt well enough to go shopping in Corby and take in an afternoon film. When she returned to Willow Bank, Charlotte had arrived for coffee and a chat. After a fair amount of the usual family banter, Charlotte left to collect Ellis from school, taking with her a generous selection of onions, beetroot and pears from the garden. It seems that a visit to Willow Bank rarely concludes without someone leaving with a contribution from the vegetable patch or fruit trees!

Meanwhile, Alice continues to demonstrate seemingly limitless energy, keeping herself busy with kayaking and achieving an impressive ninth place nationally in the Read Aloud Challenge. Clearly, sitting still and reading quietly is not quite her style; she prefers, like her mum, to add a little adventure and competition to the proceedings.

In other family news, Jamie and Ruth continue their search for their next home, while Sue has been liaising with social services and a solicitor in the hope of finding a suitable local care home for her friend Sue. On the 17th, she visited Rosewood Manor residential home, which specialises in caring for residents with dementia, to assess whether it might be a suitable place for her friend. She came away very impressed with what she saw.

A move to Rosewood Manor would have the considerable advantage of bringing Sue closer to her friends in town and her fellow U3A walkers. They would be able to visit her more frequently and with considerably less travelling, rather than having to make the journey to Lutterworth, where she is currently residing. For someone whose friendships and social connections are so important, the prospect of a more accessible local home would make a considerable difference.

It was after her visit to Rosewood Manor that Sue’s health began to deteriorate once again. The following day, she was back in bed, suffering from phlegm, a nasty cough and alternating bouts of feeling hot and cold. She said that if she hadn’t improved over the weekend, she would see the doctor again. However, by Sunday morning, I felt she was getting worse, so I once again drove her to Corby, where she was prescribed a stronger course of antibiotics.

While Sue had been confined to bed, I had been keeping her supplied with drinks and preparing her meals, but I had also found a way to occupy some of my spare time. Using AI, I began cleaning up and restoring some very old photographs of myself and other members of the family. The process is remarkably straightforward, and, by and large, the results have been surprisingly good, with most of the finer details remaining accurate. It is fascinating to see these old photographs brought back to life!

Jamie continued his travels with a trip to Benidorm accompanied by a couple of friends, while Sarah and the family took advantage of a fine weekend to dust off the tent, probably for the last time this year, and enjoy some farmyard fun during a visit to Ipstone in Derbyshire.

Sue continued to cough and splutter, spending much of her time confined to bed, although she began to show some signs of improvement over the weekend. Apart from my morning cycle rides, I was relatively housebound, tackling the everyday chores that Sue normally copes with so admirably, and which I manage rather less successfully. I also had to keep on top of a garden and allotment that, following the rain a week earlier, had sprung back into life with a vengeance. The weeds, in particular, seemed to have taken the opportunity to make up for lost time!

On a more sinister note, a couple of blogs ago I criticised the Trump administration, questioning whether it would permit a free and fair midterm election in November, and wondered what, if anything, could be done to influence the result. On a previous occasion, when I had criticised the administration earlier in the year, the number of visits to my site, primarily from readers in the USA, suddenly crashed. I suspected political interference and, after complaining to WordPress, the number of readers gradually returned over the following weeks.

This time, however, the change has been even more dramatic. US readers suddenly fell to zero, apart from the occasional visitor apparently using a VPN from elsewhere in the world, including myself. The fall in American traffic also seemed to have had an effect on visitors from other countries, with only the occasional regular follower continuing to appear. At the same time, something rather odd happened: visitors from China, who had previously been a rarity, began to increase rapidly. I can only speculate that traffic from China cannot be interfered with in quite the same way.

Whether there is any connection between these changes and my criticism of the Trump administration is impossible for me to prove. WordPress’s own guidance points out that country-level statistics can be affected by VPNs and other factors, and that sudden changes in recorded traffic can have a number of causes. Nevertheless, the timing is certainly intriguing.

Given the administration’s increasingly confrontational approach towards sections of the American media, including its recent decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists from the White House, a move now being challenged in court, concerns about pressure on freedom of the press are hardly confined to my little corner of the internet. Whether my humble family blog has really attracted the attention of anyone sufficiently powerful to interfere with its readership is another matter entirely. The coincidence is certainly difficult to ignore.

The family had some good news over the weekend when Lee told us that he had been offered a new job. It’s with a smaller company, and he already knows someone who works there, who speaks very highly of it. The role has a similar job specification and the same hours, but comes with a significant pay rise. We are so pleased for him.

On the last day of September, Sue had recovered sufficiently to resume her usual routine of shopping in Corby followed by a film at the cinema. Although it was a gloriously sunny day, I chose to spend most of it indoors, tapping away at my laptop.

Like many people trying to cope with this increasingly mad technical world, I have become thoroughly frustrated by the multitude of protocols we are expected to navigate simply to keep everyday life running smoothly. I have a little red book, kept safely in a drawer, containing the login details for all the companies, organisations and services we seem to need in order to exist on this little island.

Some apps require email addresses and passwords, others that demand PIN numbers or biometric authentication, and some that apparently won’t work unless you disable particular Android processes first. Then there are the ever-present updates, which have an irritating habit of changing the way something works just when you have finally become accustomed to it. It is all rather confusing.

And that is without the constant fear of being hacked, having your identity compromised and suddenly finding your carefully constructed little digital life put on hold and turned upside down.

My little red book, once a simple lifesaver, now contains page after page of information that has been crossed out and replaced with new, apparently essential details. It is beginning to resemble a battlefield of passwords, PINs and obscure instructions.

I therefore spent most of the day testing the various protocols needed to successfully access the services, agencies and apps we rely on, and then transferred the results into a spreadsheet in an attempt to impose some order on the chaos. It took most of the day. It won’t make life any less stressful, but hopefully it will make it a little more organised, at least until the next update comes along and changes everything again.

Just after lunch, I had a brief respite from my technological ordeal when Charlotte arrived for coffee and a chat before heading off to collect Ellis from school. It had been a couple of weeks since her last visit, and in the meantime I had learned that she and the family had booked a holiday to Krabi, Thailand, in a couple of weeks’ time.

Over the weekend, Jamie and Ruth had fun at the Nottingham Goose Fair and enjoyed a lovely sunset over Belvoir Castle from the pub. Jamie also managed a session at Kibworth Shooting Range before driving to Gumley Woods to pick some sweet chestnuts.

On a more positive note, Sue seems to be back to her old self. She has been to the Saddington Carboot, started Tai Chi with the U3A and resumed attending the Backgammon sessions. This morning (5th), I finally had my long-overdue PSA blood test, and during the afternoon we both had our flu jabs.