I fear this business of talking to anyone who bothers to read early in the morning is becoming addictive. I have just made contact with an old school friend of Mark, which is one of those nice silver linings. Last night, however, was a low point when it took me 1.5 hours on the phone to get Barclays to reinstate my internet banking which had been blocked when their fraud section had queried the payment to the funeral people - of course it is an unusual expenditure pattern! To give them their due, Barclays had phoned me about it earlier in the day. However, the fellow started the conversation by asking me for my security information and seemed entirely confused when I asked him for his security clearance before I answered. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone trying to get to someone useful to sort it out in the morning - but I thought he'd said Barclay Card and it transpired (8 hours later) that he was the Banking lot which is completely distinct. One of you clever people out there must have a solution to the two-way security problem that doesn't waste over 2 hours and more spare emotional energy than I have at the moment! More positively, I have booked tickets to Australia for Elisabeth and me for next Wednesday. Among other things this is to sign mortgage and contract papers for our new house - which I definitely don't want to lose as Mark was involved in its choice. Elisabeth is not sure about the trip so that needs to be resolved today.