It’s started. No, it had started some time ago but now it’s more. It’s difficult to get up. Getting up requires help. It was inevitable but just as I thought that, maybe, I had got it wrong and there was a long time to go, it hits and makes me sad.

As I say, it was inevitable. Still……..

Of course, it doesn’t help that the floor gives no grip. F realises this. He jokes that Dino can come to his place and I can stay with Rufus at mine. Later he says that he might get a large piece of the stuff they put under carpets here to stop them slipping – a sort of mesh thing. I think he will. Before that he had said that we would have to spend much more time at my place.

I picked the place because of the dogs but didn’t realise that the floors would be quite so good. They have a roughness that allows grip – not shiny wooden or marble floors which offer none.

So I help him to his feet. He will get used to this. I will do it for as long as it needs to be done, the only worrying thing for me will be that he may be in actual pain. I hope not but, of course, he cannot actually say. I can’t remember how long after the falling down bit it was before Ben died.

He’s OK when moving – stumbling a bit from time to time now but OK. Ben was much worse. F suggested that we have to keep them apart a bit now. “Why?”, I asked. “Because he will miss him when he’s gone”, he said. And, so, he wants him to get used to it now.

I don’t know how long it will be. Maybe months; maybe many, many months. It only happened the one night. The next day he got much better and now seems OK. But it will happen again. I’ve seen it before.

It’s still sad, even if you know it’s coming.