2 pm. I am with my five siblings, walking round a lake amid the sights and sounds of our childhood. 

HOME, 4pm. I am up a step ladder, re-painting the sitting-room ceiling.

1’s 1.30 pm, in bed — and if I am on page 141 of We are Water by Wally Lamb, I’m thinking it is no thanks to my husband, who’s scampering enthusiastically across the room’s diagonal on all fours sideways, so as to make our ancient floor-joists judder and squeak in alarming fashion.

HOME, 8.30am. Our house has been denuded of certain essential items.

I’m in England, spending a week in the company of my mother-in-law and mother; women with a mean age of 82, who have stared down the defeats of life but still remain, after all is said and done, resolutely inclined to Movement and Battling On.

BRISTOL Airport — and I am walking towards my mother-in-law’s car burdened by my luggage and a nagging sense of guilt about having dissed her driving in last-week’s column.

My mother is on the phone, alerting me to the travel arrangements which she and my mother-in-law have made on my behalf; I fly to England next week to visit both women, who live four hours apart in the West Country.

I am trying to establish the house phone’s whereabouts. 

MY SISTER is driving me to Stansted Airport. Right now she’s navigating a junction on the M11, so that we might merge with traffic on the A120 and she is getting sweary, London-driver style.

ANY STORY about a sister goes far, far back. Back to the time when you’re both just preliminary sketches of the people you’ll become,says Aida Austin.