Submitted

Thanks to sterling work from my collaborator - who gets only 4% of the money if we're funded - the bid was submitted about 40 minutes before the deadline. Fingers crossed!

Earlier, using year-old Christmas card records, I'd delivered half-a-dozen notes to flats in the block where Mum used to live, letting folk know that she'd died. It was a shame to have to tell them that the funeral would be in Cheshire but, by the end of the day I'd had one grateful email response.

Teaching saw me develop a mathematical model allowing any Sudoku to be solved using a method I'm teaching. It's a cool application, even if it's not practically useful, like many others I can tell them about.

There was a nice moment after the bid had been submitted. I was talking to L - who travelled to Brooklyn from Costa Rica yesterday - when an old colleague called in. It was his wife who died in the autumn, and his first time in work since then. He's known L all her life so it was good that they got the chance to talk.