Thank you for all your kind comments yesterday.

It had been particularly heart breaking, watching mum for three days as she slowly faded away and looking less and less like herself by the hour.

Lucky timing meant that my sister and I were sitting either side of her when she breathed her last, and I'm very glad we were.

Today I already feel much better. It's very, very sad and I'll always miss her - but her time had come. She seemed reasonably settled and content much of the time - but things would have only declined and her younger self would have hated to see what had become of her.

Inevitably poor Maisie has been fairly neglected during the last few days, so we took her out for a run on the beach today - as you can see, she had a lovely, messy time.