... to you all at this holiest time in the Christian calendar, and that extends to non-Christian friends who include me on their lists of seasonal greetings at Christmas and Eid.

And where shall I be over Easter? Youngest daughter Georgina, she who dwells in the Netherlands, will be staying with me for a few days and will be taking me to the Royal Surrey Hospital on Easter Sunday.

I was given prior warning of this appointment, and then it was confirmed. I see that there is now to be a dedicated barcode for NHS mail which will guarantee it gets to the right place at the right time even during an industrial dispute.

Evidently late letters account for some two million of the eight million missed NHS appointments. And some of those could genuinely be cases of life or death.

That barcode seems a simple idea and one wonders it was not thought of before. Perhaps it was. Maybe the suggestion got lost in the post.

It all sounds a bit like Pony Express and I was surprised to learn that those riders managed to take messages between the east and west coasts of the US in about 10 days – but the last such mail was delivered after 18 months of operation in 1861.

As part of my ongoing medical treatment I am sometimes summoned to the Royal Surrey Hospital for a face-to-face conversation with my oncologist. Sometimes a telephone conversation is organised instead.

The last time I was invited for one of these chats I was asked to get my blood pressure checked a few days before the phone call.

This is astonishingly simple: I don't know if this machine is available at all GPs but it certainly is at Hillview on Heathside Road where it stands in reception and will tell you your height, weight, blood pressure and BMI – all for free: no 10p in the slot but a neat print-out for your reference.

What a simple and useful apparatus. And very discreet – the print out appears noiselessly even if at first glance it looks as though it could be on a seaside promenade.

But this machine does not shout out your vital statistics to all and sundry.

That is the next thing to knuckle down to. With low, bright sunshine making clean windows appear to be glazed and every last mote of dust seem enormous there is no avoiding this annual chore.

Or is there? Do people still undertake it? If they do it is certainly not in my granny's style.

Everything in the room would be moved. There were no fitted carpets but a couple of decent rugs laid onto the wooden floor. These were taken up and hung outdoors to be thrashed releasing clouds of dust everywhere.

The floor was cleaned. The rugs returned but put back at a different angle to ensure even wear. Loose covers were removed from the chairs and settees and washed and hung out on the line in the fresh air.

They were the winter covers, in brown and orange. Sounds dull but it worked. They were replaced by the summer covers with a chintzy floral design.

All furniture was moved and cupboards and drawers cleared. Inevitably something would be found which had been thought lost. And the worst discoveries would be damp patches and moths.

I wonder how many people, in an effort to “modernise” their homes, ripped out the dado boards? A very useful piece of wood.

These are not just to “hide the crack between the wall and floor” but to prevent furniture being pushed tightly against the wall and thus encouraging the growth of mould.

Another reason not to change things before you know what they were put there for in the first place.

I am grateful that the decision has been made for me not to open my garden for this year's Horsell Garden Safari. I shall sit back and see what, literally, crops up.

On my wanders around the garden I come across plants which look considerably ill, if not dead. Shall I grub them up or hang on and see what happens?

The fact that we had no rain for about a month may have something to do with their lackadaisical appearance. As the hymn has it “soft, refreshing, rain” may perk things up.

Rain will certainly bring forth weeds – they also suffered from lack of water.

In my pre-unwell days I would have weeded a border in half a day but now I limit myself to a few yards – and then discover even more things which are where they didn't ought to be.

I must plant the nasturtium seeds which I harvested so carefully last year. And when I get them out I shall come across all those other seeds I collected.

Shall I plant them out? Will there be another cold snap? Shall I retrieve overwintering plants from the greenhouse or will I find I have positioned them in the one remaining frost pocket in the entire garden?

I fear my wormwood has had it: some twigs snapped ominously but some just bent – life in the old shrub yet?

Then, at last, came the rain. Some of it was like armour-piercing bullets yet the cherry tree kept its blossom.

Then it settled down to something gentler and the earth lapped it up. Within half an hour or so I could walk down the previously flooded path without getting wet feet. I wonder if it will have resuscitated the wormwood?

Of course, granny would say “if those are the worst of your worries, you've nothing to worry about!”

When we think of Victoria Way closure we tend to think of road traffic. But the effect is more widespread.

My daughter works in Goldsworth Road, therefore it is not too much out of her way to collect prescriptions for me from Boots.

It wasn't. It is now.

A large and angular box of medical stuff for me had been misdirected to Boots, whereas we had arranged, so we thought, for it to be delivered near my GP where it could be picked up by car.

Boots told her it could not be redirected and so she lugged this box, weighing over two and a half stone and much too unwieldy to tuck under your arm.

Previously she would have gone down a level by escalator, lift or stairs, then walked across Victoria Way and out past Superbowl. Five minutes max.

But back then you couldn't cross the road, even as a mere pedestrian.

She therefore had to detour around the town until she could cross the road nearer to Victoria Arch, down Goldsworth Road, past the fire station and then hairpin back towards Superbowl to get to her office.

Her latest report, as of Wednesday afternoon last week, stated: "They have cleared the road outside the Hilton Hotel and are sweeping the area as I write this, I expect the road to be finally open later today."

I hope time has proved her right.

She reckoned she could have auditioned for a part in The Incredibles her arms had stretched so much.