Monthly Archives: March 2025

The floor of the entry hall

of the house in which my sister and her two friends  had taken up residence to  further a small company was black and white marble.   I was 14 and we had just driven through from Yorkshire to Hampshire.  And I had raised my voice against my parents.   “Are you going to fight all the way there?”   They stopped.  I don’t remember being invited into the conversation so I didn’t have the opportunity to tell them how frightened I was, that I had seen my mother hiding letters from my sister in her dressing gown pocket until she could read them and then offer them to my father as lunchtime post.   And my father had taken advantage of my mother’s absence for her two evening shifts a week, to talk to me about how worried he was about my sister.  And my mother.  And now they were arguing.

When we arrived in that hall, my sister thought she was right and my parents thought she was wrong, and my father took me out of it into the garden for a while.   Nothing was resolved.  I’ve thought of that floor a lot recently.

I like black and white – print of course, prefer black and white check to black and white stripe, black and white films and photographs, understand oh deeply that everything is not black and white, and I suppose the most important aspect of the floor was not what it looked like but how well it fitted together. 

I am looking, of course I am, for positives.   I have just had to for a week while the internet provider chucked his weight about and the one of two positives I got out of that was when my own technical advisor pointed out that I was luck y to be able to speak to a person – widely now  bots, AI and nobody to address.  The other positive is that the machine has been regained – I don’t have the language for this. 

I loathe it.  Pam the Painter and I regularly bemoan the passing of typewriters, carbon and copy paper and the telephone – answered by a human.

Much of the reportage – whether in print, audio or visual – is either wonderful or awful.   Shades of grey have been relegated to soft porn (50 Shades of) and it’s a black and white world except where people occasionally say what they mean, look at something from every angle and devil take the hindmost.   But how many people have time to think?

I had complimented the writer I met years ago on how good she looked – some men and women look better in age (that’s not what I said).  When she got over the fact that I remembered her and  discovered my age, she exclaimed “But you must have had surgery” to which I replied (my mother’s daughter) “Don’t be silly.  I am with Dietrich

– you don’t put a knife in my face.” 

Mary Berry doesn’t mean much to me because I don’t like cookery programmes.  But Vogue gave her the cover for her 90^th birthday.  That’s the white of it.  The black is she only gets near the cover at that age because she is on television.   Older people are out of fashion, the pursuit of youth leading to the delay and denial of death.

maybe Mark Twain, maybe our old friend “anon”.

The smart money does a lot of bet hedging and publishes the parlous state of the British economy two pages after their own economics editor suggests carefully that maybe we have the corner – take your choice.

And occasionally you even get what seems white and gets darker line by line as you read it (a profile of the US Vice President) in which the right things are said but don’t ring true.

I confess I do not like remakes – be it Bergerac, West Side Story or Cinderella.  I understand that story lines are used and reused, of course I do, but if you have a stand out knockout original – leave it alone.  And the bad reviews and indeed measured commentary on Disney’s 10 year, multi writer, withdrawn from its London premiere all umpteen million dollars of it, remake of Snow White, obviously heartfelt by the writers, made me into that horrid little girl who was punished for saying “Told you so!”   

It’s going to be a good week – Josh garnished the garden

yesterday and  there is a French film on Saturday next I haven’t seen.  It could be a bad one but I haven’t seen too many of those and I have been exposed to endless Welsh/Scottish/Irish product.  The Gaelic language thriller was outstanding  but the others weren’t.  Doubtless another BBC quota to be ticked alongside second rate Scandi in the name of the good ones which were outstanding.   I don’t  do more than a week at a time.

The key players

in the present world crisis make me angry, afraid, anxious  and to what point ?  They will do what they do, damn them, against the best efforts of an administration labouring through a system in dire need of laxative to move us on to appropriating Russian assets and splitting them with Ukraine, putting rearmament programmes in place and beginning to teach people that they have a social contribution to make and it’s unlikely to be anything to do with a belated diagnosis of ADHD or depression.  

The enemy within is the empire of the drug companies,

the acceptance by far too many people that diagnosis should be ten minutes, a label and a prescription and the mental submission posture that implies “Everybody can do something about this – except me.”

It was a bad week at the hands of an internet provider who doesn’t care and a long haul back to balance.  I met a neighbour yesterday, looking tired and frazzled, who had been trying to  buy  proper waterproof boots for a botanical expedition.  She hit  blank  indifference and disinterest, including Harrods, which she referred to as a vision of hell.  I privately thought she was a decade out to be going there.  I gave up on my favourite “big” store when it offered me a cashmere rollneck for £1200 to a background of rap, for me the musical equivalent of having my teeth filled.

Because Snowdrop and I sometimes share books, he got me to re read Henry James.  But you’re stuck with personal preference.  I couldn’t, I am an Edith Wharton girl, HJ was like homework.

What I was looking for was escapism.  I would have embarrassed to say that years ago.  My life is good, what do I have to escape from ?  But the positive side of escapism is that you open yourself to something other than what usually makes up your life.  You might see the performance of something you never thought you’d watch.  The experience of any form of reading, tv. radio, film is all based on suck it and see.   You are in control of incoming cultural traffic.   Pass on HJ, pause on Dancing Back to the Light (BBC2).

There is no logic to my love of ballet except that it is other than anything else and watching this film (directed by Stephane Carrel) about Steven McRae’s recovery from tendon injury x 2, not 20 any more, confirmed a big insight. 

McRae is a principal dancer

at the Royal Ballet and I watched this man put all his physical and mental intelligence into rebuilding and repairing the only instrument that counts for him – his body, in dance – assisted by all sorts of sympathetically accredited disciplines.

And I had an insight into the tension between the endless work – back,legs, feet, stretch, rest – like preparing for an athletic event – again and again and again – to procure the illusion of effortlessness.

Long ago a famous ballerina said “you can have two days off – but then you have to do class.”  It’s like painting the Forth Bridge – unremitting.

And McRae is married to a former dancer (oh that’s an interview I’d like) with three appealing small children, and he came aged 17 to the Royal Ballet from a suburb of Sydney.  Dance is his discipline – and he learnt and talked of how he had been misguided, what he had to learn anew – to students as well as the camera.  

And it was not without reverses.

And I watched him exercise his straight toes – vital of course as part of support of the foot.  No foot, no float …  It’s too late for my toes  but the film shone 90 minutes of light on me in a dark world.

The connotation of saying what you mean

  is too often seen as being  disagreeable when a   more sensitive soul might have  left the matter alone,  used a gentler phrase or  kept quiet.  This  may come as a terrible shock to you but I say nice things as often  as I can and only  when I perceive them to be true.   As in the case of a young woman the other day whose coat I admired.  So I said so.   She looked at me as if I were holding matched snakes.  “Me ?” she said  round eyed.  So I said, “It’s a compliment, it’s free, non addictive, not fattening.  I don’t want money and I am not after your body.”  Whereupon she relaxed into a giggle and a smile.

Whilst in the present ongoing unholy international stew , provocation won’t help – a bit of saying what you mean is refreshing.  Last week I used a phrase from an interview with

BBC’s Emma Barnett in which she spoke about the pressure parents feel to be perfect and wanting to create a panic room for parents.  A  panic room for parents is a slick phrase (can’t beat a bit of alliteration) but the first  given you come to terms with as a parent, regardless of  whether your own were useful to you or not,  is that you can only do your best and know that, with all your  impeccable intentions, it may not suit your child.   Styles of parenting are a whole other thing.

Communication comes into this – parent to parent, and parent to child and on into education, special interests and so on.   One is never done being a parent, even if one has to learn to shut up, stand back and let be.   And you may have what you perceive as a quiet sweet child.  Until you discover that he or she has a will of iron.

You don’t need many words to stonewall.

We talk about children as a separate race because it is easier to sell them and their parents things for them that way but every child is set to grow and they change quite fast.   Speed of development varies  and perfection of children or parents doesn’t come into it.   I am very wary about perfection especially applied to people, other than situationally.  You can behave perfectly in a particular circumstance but that doesn’t make you perfect.  

Perfection is like nirvana.  You may strive for it but the journey to it is where you will learn and grow,  the  achievement of the final goal likely to be denied.    

Perfect parenthood is like perfect health.   Health is reliable, maintained through water consumption, exercise, food and rest.   And so many times  we say to each other “but I always thought he/she was in very good shape” as somebody staggers into cancer or heart disease, and worse. 

Because we are anxious (we’d have to be stupid not to be – anxiety is there in the atmosphere, running out of money, running out of time, the pressure politically ) we turn to health as something to be maintained in perfection.  

But it varies  as the weather varies.   That’s why it is so difficult to sell long term health maintenance to so many people.  They just take their health for granted till it falters.  And even if you do all the right things, it is not a marble statue – an achievable goal – perfection.  It is a work in progress and the darndest things emerge as you go on.   If you had been told about them, would you remember them ?  Not till there was a problem.

And then  we’d have to talk about  what kind of a problem.   Saying what you mean comes into that too.  And you may be stuck with a fear for which you don’t have a language – just like the hooha currently going forward with my  internet provider.   Or a child you can’t reach.   Or a  health problem that frightens you so much, you can’t think about it.   Our old friend denial- very primitive, very strong.

Communication is never wasted, even if it is awkward or unpleasant and human to human agreeably at the moment is  candlelight in several kinds of dark –  I will happily share my matches.

the Ukrainian trident

When do I mention  Zelensky ?  I can’t not, because the President of  Ukraine sat with  the President and Vice President of the US – and we retain all the  names.   And when you are attacked, you either give in or fight back, both open to endless interpretation.   Speaking as somebody who has been attacked and done both – yes, physically –  you do what you do.

You have to really want politics  badly at any level, let alone internationally, because it makes shot putt, pirouette or world stardom look like tiddlywinks in comparison.

I looked up the definitions of trust, I’m stuck with trust.

I’ll trust Zelensky – even when he gets it wrong.   Full stop.   Everybody else has written and talked about this  to  punchdrunk, I am not.

One of the saddest things about human history is how long it takes us to learn, if indeed we ever do.   Personally and collectively the human race is slow to learn.  Oh sure, there are lessons like lightening – don’t do that again, don’t buy that again – but it’s been a year  I have been maundering about keeping a spare key with a convenient neighbour until I lost mine and had to be rescued by Wal  – who only  has a key because he doesn’t want to find me dead on the floor for the want of asking “Are you all right ?”   

And  even if  I am prepared to claim it

– I am not sure that my past  does anything for you.   Tell you about me ?   Yes, a bit.   Tell you about you ?  Maybe.   But you can push that away, indeed deny it, forget  about it – until crisis.  Like me and the key.     

Yesterday I started thinking about what I was  going to write.   There are days when this springs to mind, if not quite fully formed, well on the way.  Yesterday  afternoon I wrote a long careful piece about Zelensky and the meeting in Washington – but  it  didn’t work.   Even the printer hesitated.  (Oh how I would like five minutes with the CEO of Epson).

But this morning I saw a sentence that niggled at me and yes, I have read the piece.   It said “ I regret 

every cigarette I smoked.”    I don’t.   I am trying to think of what I do regret and the answer is not much and anyway – why would I share it with media except for profit ?

I also thought yesterday, casting around, of all the things I don’t have/haven’t done.   Not a trip to India – I might have got lost in India – I’d be there for years.   Not Tierra de Fuego.  I can still have those unmet  dreams met by camera.  But all sorts of things.  

I have never sat with a bunch of women, no matter how much I liked them, getting legless on bad wine and talking about their sex lives.  I have never worn leggings – fine for you, not for me.   Nor has peroxide come near my hair.  I f you want to see panic in  the streets – ban peroxide.   I don’t like mobile phones and before you tell me how essential they are – I am cackhanded,  use two different pairs of specs because I can’t do varifocals and when I was recently so ill, its use would have been beyond me.  

Occasionally  I’d be asked why I disliked being called an agony aunt and I would explain that I felt it derogated the writers of letters and phone callers whom I had treated seriously.

As soon as you say to me “everybody  is” doing something, I don’t want to.  I have never listened to podcast.   I don’t listen to radio any more: when it’s good, I miss it and when it’s bad, I muse fruitlessly but briefly on how much work I could lately have done.  

I cherish every cigarette I  smoked, every man I went to bed with  (quickest way to learn about them).   I can’t cherish my  bad language (horrible) but I cherish where it comes from – anger, displeasure, frustration,  heaven help me, the occasional wish to shock.    But whether this will help anybody else – that’s open to question.  We learn for ourselves, it defines us.    The  people who won’t learn

– that’s who we have worry about.      

*thanks to the Who