It's Milly's birthday today, so I went and sat on her bench and missed her. I briefly considered putting it in perspective before I remembered that the 'it' was 'grief', and grief is always up close and personal. You can't put grief in perspective. It just is, or it isn't.

Milly's bench overlooks N and G's grave. I remember G's funeral so clearly that I could almost see my 13 year-old self hunched up in the donkey jacket I wore, my hair in that terrible blonde wedge. I remember Philip McCormick, who was an altar boy at the service, weeping uncontrollably. His dad had died not long before and he couldn't take the associations. I remember Aunt Lorraine, all six long feet of her, hugging my short self to her bony chest and sobbing, even though she and G never got along. I remember that I didn't really cry that day, though I've cried for G many times since, and still do. Some grief, it seems, never goes away.

After I left the cemetery, I had to rush into town to catch a screening of Mike Leigh's new film, 'Happy-Go-Lucky'. It's about a sunny thirtysomething primary school teacher from North London who's slowly beginning to contemplate the next stage of her adult life. I couldn't believe it. Like that  didn't chime loudly enough to wake me up, the external shots of the teacher's flat were actually filmed at the end of Milly's road. This might have made me sad - you can, I realise, spot dark forces wherever you look if you so choose - but it made me happy instead. One important discovery has been that grief and happiness are by no means mutually exclusive. It has allowed me to keep grieving without guilt.