Crew Cut

It's been a long old day. We were up at 4.30 to drive up to Dublin to collect Z's sister Dara, flying in from Canada to be with Jo for a bit, Autumn came over from London last night.
Back in Cork at the hospital with more family members and an old friend down from Dublin, a stressy, fraught, emotional day. We broke for a meal and the two of us headed back to Clon a little later, the teeming rain and grid-locked traffic to match the rest. There, the last of the trick-or-treaters were still around, but though we've a big bag of stuff we got for them last weekend, for the first time in 10 years neither of us had the heart for it and laid low in the kitchen, like a Halloween Scrooge and Marley.
Then a text from Cork, Jo's had her breathing tube removed as she's ok without it. She can talk again, the loss she hated most, she's chatting a little. O frabjous day, callooh, callay