Category Archives: Uncategorized

rows of stockings

Posted on December 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

Man of the week for me was

Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, who named the fear to say Putin will make war on Europe and we should get our heads around it now -shortages, cold, bombs, disruption. File this under “prepare for the worst and hope for the best” which is a good way to live

I wish I could send cards

to everyone I wanted to but it is expensive, impractical and unrealistic. So here, for the record, are things in my stockings filed under what I want: what I don’t want: and what I wish for, denoted w, dw and wh.

I wish I could thank you all for staying with me this troubled year (w). I wish I could thank every journalist, writer and presenter who has given me pleasure – quite a lot, hooray (w). But you can’t get to them, even if you could fork out for the postage. I would ban, blow up or otherwise disable social media (w) which I regard as the Other’s War on the west,..However it came about – oh the hubris of humankind.

I’d like us all to do a bit more towards every kind of peace up

to and including world peace (w)and I would like to be out of pain (w). I would like to send a group card (w) to my local Waitrose – a shop staffed by kind professionals, a credit to the race.

Christmas brings out the competitive – the best food and drink, clothes, gifts, party, guest list, decorations – like the eleven plus with holly. I would ban the word “perfect” in this context.

(w) My Christmas is mine, about the past (both glowing and grim memories) but it couldn’t have started better. I hope in the smiling anterooms of another world that my parents know how much I appreciate their love, the food they gave me, the wonderful simple memories they created for years (w). I remember my son’s second Christmas and the smallest blue jeans on the planet.

Of course there is wish fulfilment at Christmas – there is leave, to go and meet (w), there is warmth and nourishment and colour and light and extra ordinary patience – with this one’s indigestion and that one’s paddy. But I w ill do it my way, not your way, and I’d encourage people to read everything they could about the origins of Christmas and the stories that have built up around it (w) – sure, they are stories. A Russian proverb says “A story is more powerful than the Tsar.”

Let’s hope ours, acted on, believed in and committed to, will be more powerful than Putin (w).

Forget endless food of no value overloaded with fat and sugar and heaven knows what else (dw) Only those catering to extended groups need food on this scale (dw) You make a selection from the trimmings the children adore – they are unnecessarily expensive unless they mean something to you (dw). I have unscented candles 365 days of the year (w) though I was tempted to one in a dark red glass container, scented with things I liked . But I don’t need it.

For the first time for ages, I saw a coat I liked (w), a bracelet I liked (w) and a tempting lip gloss (w) . A person can dream. All three of these could be countersigned as wishes (wh). I don’t need them and can’t afford them but it was lovely to see something I really liked, to have an innocent yearning for something that pleased my eye.

I wish(wh) to keep my temper better – I have lost it twice recently with twits. Yes that is a value judgement. Trimmed with your best baubles, a twit is a twit. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people reinvested in basic courtesies and good manners , realizing that this is the hallmark of power and maturity, not necessarily weakness and evasion (wh). It’s all in the tone. Whoever is next in power, I hope they can communicate better than over the last many years (wh). It’s a learned skill, it should be mandatory in public life to learn it. Make war on dumped rubbish, large or small, get some of the bright directionless young to do something about it (wh) Believe in commonsense (wh), smile more often than frown (wh) and understand that this world is the only one we have and cherish it (heartfelt).

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Tagged books, christmas, fiction, life, writing

early this year

Posted on December 9, 2025 | Leave a comment

This year, celebration of the midwinter feast of Yule

shrewdly hooked to the birth of the Christ (Christian administrators were very good at making use of what was there already to advance their cause, given how important they thought it was) has been wonderful.

One of my oldest and dearest friends arrived first, tiny in a black trousers suit, splendid jewellery, her arms full of flowers, homemade soup, cheese, fresh bread, “do try this” in lots of small cartons – and it’s her way. She’d do it if it were May. And you feel like a small child given run of a delicatessen Santa’s grotto.

The elves arrive every week – masquerading as rubbish collectors,

in that killer orange and because I have socially invested in them ie I go out , I say thank you to whoever is handy – I don’t care if they don’t get it, they will eventually understand – and two of them did. Before I could speak, they waved and grinned – “’Morning, miss !” In London. In 2025. And the moral of this story is – somebody has to make the first move. I will.

My son came up with something for my granddaughter. Thank heaven because I was stuck. And then volunteered a Christmas list of what he really wanted – graphic novels named and spelled out, or Manuka vodka. Giving him something is usually like offering him physical harm.

I went to get the second bus – and at the back of a short queue was a tall whitehaired man with a walking stick in the most enviable double breasted black cashmere greatcoat,

worn just enough to his shape, and I said into his face with a grin “Sir, you look wonderful!” He looked at me for a moment, then smiled and said “Thank you. I am 91!” So I said I was 81 “and I have impeccable taste!”

He made the next conversational move and we went on effortlessly. He was a Dutch engineer, he was going to their embassy. He talked about working all over the Middle and Far East, about Jews living in every country, he talked about half the Palestinians being Christian. His partner was Palestinian. He has a religiously inclined daughter and an utterly disbelieving son. “I am with him” he said.

He told me about a museum in Taiwan which has great Chinese treasure, collected by Chiang Kai-Shek, including a crystal ball – really a ball and really crystal.

like this

“I can’t imagine how long it took to make” he said “but I go back to it, my wife and I go back to it – and within a few minutes of seeing it, I am emotional, very moved.”

We had spoken briefly of the importance of using formal language to make bridges, not walls and when he got up to go he said “This was lovely, madam” and I said “Indeed sir.”

Then coming down the bus stairs, came a couple who smiled at me as if they saw me a week ago. We all got out and I asked my inevitable question – and they are Iranian. They moved here five months ago. She is a pharmacist, he an architect who has become a painter. They have a young son. And I told them (being aware how fractionalized politics is) that I saw a man with the Israeli flag and another I didn’t recognize which turned out to be from Iran. The man said “But we have Jews in Iran, we like Israel. We are waiting for our regime to fall…” I have read that phrase but have never heard it said. I looked at him. “Oh yes” said his wife. “we came for our son, sure, better school, better opportunities and so on. But we came for water, for electricity, for air .. we are sitting in an 8,000 year old culture and watching it be denied and destroyed by people who are not from there … Their Iran is not ours”

I wrote recently about the impact of seeing it with your own eyes, hearing it with your own ears (see annalog/ as others see us) and I did.

Christmas came early for me this year.

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Tagged bible, faith, fiction, god, jesus

always personal

Posted on December 2, 2025 | Leave a comment

I married twice, the first time (25 through 30) to a film maker (his term) who fell in love with film at the IDHEC

in Paris. I have an idea of why I married him (he asked, for a start) but I have no idea of why he married me. And when I up and quit, his principal response was that he did not like being second in any decision.

Very early on in our time together, he took me to see the films of Jean Luc Godard.

Eight of them in five days. He spoke fluent French, I watched and listened and paid attention. In the Euston Road afterwards, I asked him please, to explain why this work was so important. He said “Any fool can see …” I should have known then. Because I couldn’t.

In the BBC common practice, the film named in English as Breathless was shown at the weekend. And it will rerun next week. My tv and film crib sheet often offers a couple of well placed lines – amusingly tart, covering the basics. I once wrote and complimented whoever was involved and received a response from the editor. This time around it says”… gloriously cool film” and I knew what the problem was.

I was never cool.

Never have been. Longed to be. Hoped that if I understood it, I might at least aspire. But not a hope. Trying to look up “cool” online is funny. There are so many bits and pieces from conventional usage to modern variations which make me feel I am not speaking my own language. I knew I missed that boat and became involved in my choices, what I thought. Hang cool.

The man behind the film began as a critic. Dislocation number two. I read critics for information to help me make up my own mind.

I have seen a lot of the now deceased Franco-Swiss eminence’s other films and I like them all better than this breakout number, now listed as one of the greatest films ever made, which my then new and admired husband declined to explain to me. (Childishly I want to stand on a box and shout “Who says ?”)

It would have been a tall order, for him to explain because French cinema at that time was remote from British and US product in more ways than through language. “A different inheritance” would have been a nice phrase to start with, which would have eased the feeling from the exchange that I was just thick.

A dear friend rang last night to say she was going to watch

and I haven’t spoken to her because I lasted an hour, switched off and I didn’t care. Positives include the actors and the camerawork but “genius” is an overworked word generally, in any kind of artistic endeavour, and however deeply interested in film I am, see my title: it’s always personal.

How we make choices is fascinating. I saw a little review of an exhibition of paintings by William Nicholson and remembered that Pam the Painter used to love him. When I mentioned his name, you’d have thought he was a favourite uncle –“Oh yes” she said. Two different and close friends thought I might like Notting Hill but I didn’t.

I was brought up to be me, to find out who that was, refine it, understand it and trust it. To this end, and he heard nothing of it from me, one of my first husband’s oldest friends remarked to me (Michael was in Sweden scouting locations) “You are much brighter than Michael.” I gaped.

And apparently, it wasn’t an intellectual pass – to which I might have been susceptible, so desperately did I want to be taken seriously. He meant it.

An enormous step on the road to trusting my own judgement.

Of course I learned to say socially graceful things like “I am afraid I have never understood…” or “What an interesting point of view! “ but the $64,000 interior question was “What do I think ?” Oh I can be wrong – in spades – or miss the point but when you tell me “everybody” thinks this or chooses that, I growl quietly. There’s only me in matters of taste. It’s always personal.

Just call me Godmother

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Tagged film, life, love, movies, writing

still the story

Posted on November 25, 2025 | Leave a comment

At 4.30 or so on Friday afternoon to a noise like nuts and bolts being shaken in a wooden box to the attacking rhythm of a pneumatic drill,

like hailstones

the screen failed. I tried to revive it and got a unctuous message about not being able to repair your screen automatically at this time ho hum… The computer man’s company, conceived for business ventures run from home, the elderly and first time users, Is open Monday through Friday so I wasn’t going to be able to do anything until Sunday night/Monday morning when I could phone for help.

Like a thunderstorm, all blown out by the following morning, thank you heaven, on we go. Self awarded self little red glass heart signifying sangfroid.

nearest I get to cool

I had looked at the Christmas box, also red, and it had looked at me, so I took a bus to the front of a local church where cards are sold every Christmas. It was chastening. Nothing I would buy and if I did, nothing I would send. I came out into a half closed main road, the smell of heating up fast food in booths, badly relayed rock, five foot teddy bears and mammoth pink bows on lampposts.

I met Ben the florist and told him I can’t do this. “Why do you think I’m here? Neither can Dad. Took one look and went home …” looking at me, adding wrily. “It’s only today, gone tomorrow.” I said “Thank God”…

I know several people who really dislike Christmas.

I am not one of them. But I hate the hijack into ruthless commerciality and even more pink. Got nothing against pink but Christmas colours are silver and gold, red and green, with a permitted sidebar into blue and white shading into silver if you must. And I don’t want to be “must ed” from November on, through an increasingly desperately extended “Christmas season”.

So Denning and I discussed cards.

I love Christmas cards, so does he. We send them – by the Post Office recommended dates if not earlier. We chose them carefully, with more affection than formality, a hello/how are you catchup once a year to a wide range of people – some you don’t want to think you forgot (Mark in the depths of rural Wales), some in remembrance of things past as well as present, some new – but we agreed, if they are not in the post by the end of the first week in December, who knows when they will get there? You hear stories of the card that arrived in April the following year, the ones that were dumped and it is an item – a Christmas present – cards, envelopes, stamps, the labour of writing and it is only worth it,

if it is worth it to you.

Since then, SR sent me a pack of black and white cards from a sketch by an artist I admire – Eric Ravilious. Hooray. That broke the card deadlock. Waterstones came up with something I warmed to in three designs out of four – so I grabbed those. Christmas cards are on the schedule.

In New York 62 years ago I was thrilled by the range and variety of every kind of card, especially the picture for the sake of the picture and selling you an envelope, write your own message cards, still am but the range is shrinking.

Think of the industry that could go to the wall – paper, card, original design or rights to the images, assembly, marketing. Not a cheap option. And then add the postage.

All my long life, people had to think about what they could and would spend at Christmas – and make choices – and that’s fine. You don’t think Mary wanted to ride that donkey all those miles to Bethlehem, do you? It was the best Joseph could do. And the ox moved over, to share the stall with the tired ass. Not a believer for many years, I love the Christmas story – it is one of hope – and you can’t tell it till you get there – that when you are down and finished, the phone rings or a note comes or a hand is extended, food is offered, warmth shared. The Kings come through the night with gifts

and the shepherds bring their lambs. A story for all of us – and we are all stories.

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Tagged christmas, family, holidays, life, writing

on the record

Posted on November 18, 2025 | Leave a comment

Three cheers for John Humphrys

about whom I know nothing beyond that he gave a me an interview at the old Talk Radio (briefly a radio station), encouraged me at one of the few industry do’s I could be persuaded to attend and spoke with unexpected candour to me at Radio 4, in the bowels of the BBC, long before its present convulsions. (see the owl in last week’s annalog – personal experience of him, myself as witness.)

Accurately quoted temperate and even appropriate criticism of the BBC (for whom he worked 30 years and more) from his latest book (2019) took him he writes “from hero to zero in the BBC.” And therein lies the problem – corporate defensiveness is his description. I call it bad management.

And of course Donald Trump

is going to pursue charges against the BBC: he is famously litigious, he has several actions outstanding in the US including against The Wall Street Journal. He can afford it, and he hopes it will keep the mind off Epstein, his involvement with whom in the US still has a way to run and fallout that can’t be estimated. What we used call “trouble at the mill.”

If it is a mark of appreciation to continue to be interested in somebody when they get it wrong, I’d think of Michelle Obama

(new book The Look, about dressing for every kind of eye, and why, and how.)

Having read her autobiography Becoming, I was agreeably surprised. But then she appeared for Kamala Harris’s ill fated campaign and for my money got it all wrong. She looked wrong, wearing black (very difficult on tv camera), too much jewellery, fake plaits and she had (as is common now) her speech on autocue. And it was wrong – too long, too much agreed hagiography – ill judged. I wanted to shout “Throw it away and speak!”

Those were the days …

But I like her and she carries with great grace being 6 feet tall, Afro-American, good looking, intelligent and successful. And it’s hard. Easier to criticize her arms than listen to what she is trying to do.

I think of Shabana Mahmood, the only front ranking Labour government appointee I have seen, unequivocally praised in print by political rivals.

She works, she’s bright, she’s trying to do something on which it is too easy to pour scorn – and be herself, a British born Asian (parents from the Pakistani side of Kashmir) making difficult decisions in public. She appears less in the press that a President’s consort so we haven’t got round to sniping about her sartorial taste yet but just wait till she makes a misstep – and you will hear all about her flat hairdo and the length of her skirt.

I don’t want to write about the BBC, I don’t know nearly enough but you can rely on JH’s experience of “you’re either on the bus” ie blanket endorsement “or off the bus” ie dare to have an independent thought and the doors close.

This is an illness of radio in general. One minute you are doing it to apparent praise and certainly appreciation and the next minute, you end the programme on Friday – and you’re gone -somewhere else, gardening, extended plastic surgery – gone.

But it is kind of shocking to see it, in measured tones, in print, years after the event – and I did wonder. Senior political reporter treated just like little me – till I could find another raft and scull to something else. Public life means you treasure your real friends and you learn to roll with the curious, the disapproving, the unfriendly. Reinvention may be just as profoundly considered but less talked about and quite different.

Would I consider another radio show? Yes, if I could work out the logistics of it, through fatigue to a quiet mind. But nobody is offering. I had a wonderful innings. Nothing lasts forever. There are second acts in public life but we only call them second acts because they involve the same progenitor: what is done is almost without exception very different. Like marriage – for better or worse.

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Tagged bbc, books, fiction, music, writing

as others see us

Posted on November 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

Every so often, some kind person suggests that I

might write another book … For the record, I wrote three or two and a half – this last was really commentary (I learned to call it a monograph) on some previously unknown pictures of the film star Joan Crawford, who caught my imagination. JC’s story was the first time I appreciated the cost of coming from nothing to something and having to make your life up, not once, but over and over again. It also taught me that you should never be surprised at the backstory of an enormously successful person,

especially in media, because what is seen is underwritten by a lot of other less attractive qualities.

On BBC Radio Four Wednesday 12 November you can hear the story of a writer hung out to dry, after many years of work which fed her writing, the in-person support of those she wrote about and, for my money critically, that the people in power in the publishing company had not read the book that set off this catastrophic unravelling. And finally shamingly had to admit it. That is of course now down played by a statement from the current “suit” about it being in the publishers` past,

deeply regrettable, sincere apologies to all concerned, etc.

Categoric statement about any kind of creativity: if you haven’t with your own eyes

seen the picture, read the material (article, magazine, leaflet, book and so on), seen the film or play, examined the statue or the woodcut – you don’t know what the hell you are talking about. And this story, of the author Kate Clanchy called Anatomy of a Cancellation, is about how you can be taken against to the detriment of your life and work.

I remember meetings with publishers. I had sort of some sort literary representation at one time. I didn’t generate pennies or profile so I probably wasn’t as interesting to them as they gave me to understand. Nor as malleable, or as skillful as they in those first enthusiastic moments implied. Thank heaven.

I remember changes of personnel at publishers without so much as “I thought you’d like to know …” although I was directly involved. I remember disinterest and I remember dissatisfaction (personal, this) with the length of the procedure.

I wrote a memoir ( you couldn’t call it an autobiography – too soon) on spec. No money changed hands, I wanted to see if I could do it. I think of it as I affectionately pat the kitchen table (still with me) at which I wrote it, on a reconditioned manual typewriter (office model) which I still prefer.

Hardback was painless, it went to paperback where a snooty editor asked me for a definition of “pack ice” – I said she’d find it in the dictionary, which is where I found it – and checked it, before I used it. I fought for the text I had written.

It’s not my favourite book but I reread it a couple of years ago without regret. I didn’t get much in the way of review, because it was unfashionably candid.

Bear in mind please, that this is at a time when I thought writing a book was the be-all and end-all and would confer on me a kind of direction and serious mindedness to which I aspired. And respect.

I wrote a novel of which I was reminded the other day when SR sent me a note about it and A Psycho Analytic Analysis of the Mother and Daughter Relationship in … of which I had never heard.

36 years later, I live and learn. Mine is very much a first novel, an only novel. I had a lot of work to do and I didn’t do it.

I learned over time various truths about me, the life I was in, and writing. I discovered that I might aspire to journalism – which was going to be a long journey, God Bless the New York Review of Books, Robert Caro and all sorts of people who made me think and kept me going, try again, try again – and a whole new appreciation of the broadcast spoken word as achievement.

No such thing as white collar occupation – blood on every collar !

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Tagged author, books, fiction, reading, writing

control

Posted on November 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Anthony Hopkins

is a very good actor. That’s all I need to know about him. And in the interview in advance of a memoir (he’s 87) a thoughtful journalist doesn’t get much more.

I read the piece once, yes, yes, and then I read it again. Of course AH wouldn’t tell you if he ever had therapy. Why would he ? Why would anybody in public life who has drawn on the wellsprings of rejection, confusion, anger for most of his life ? The French say “Don’t spit in the soup.” If this what make things tick

for you, don’t be seduced into analysis of it (pardon the pun). Or confession. Control.

One of the illusions of success in any field is that you will be able to control what goes forward. Or at the very least have input into it. As life unspools

before you (whoever) realise that none of the stratagems in which you were encouraged to believe work, much beyond washing your neck and survival. And you file what you do control under the mental equivalent of lock and key. Not tangible lock and key of course, because a real lock begs to be undone by somebody, for one reason or another. As my lovely deep voiced neighbour Carly says “everybody has secrets.” And a secret is only a secret if you tell it to nobody. Or the one person you can trust.

We acknowledge now how out of control we are.

I am keeping BT’s last letter to me as evidence of how not to write a letter, any letter, personal or professional, starting with chummy and ending with “how to make a complaint” – which they have just cancelled. I rang. The office is in a geographical area I know and the accents are not unfamiliar to me. Ears still good. And alongside the accent, the young woman on the phone had a voice like a hysterical clockwork mouse. And (God forgive me) six sentences in, I put the phone down. She rang back. “’S BT” she squeaked. “I said “Yes, I’m sorry, I hung up. I am familiar with the accent, I am the other end of the country, old and you should not be doing that job. You are unintelligible. “ Phone down.

That represents a life change for me. I have been young, poor, unskilled, desperate – but you could hear me – in life, or on the phone. That’s all the control I have.

I had another model of different variety, same ailment re the delivery (cherished) of the newspaper I read. Operator didn’t listen – I was quiet and civil, promise. On the third repetition, and her repeated unnecessary apology, I pointed out with force that (fourth time) a colleague of hers had asked me to call back if what happened October 25 ever happened again and it had, November 1.

I know I have a “thing” about communication. It’s been my life, from childhood with articulate accessible parents ,through the experience of being ill as a child, learning, learning, learning and some success. Do I have the illusion that I am in control of it ? Honestly ? More than many. But like a good carpenter, I am still practicing. And I still get it wrong.

Nora who is American, intellectually educated and capable, 24, whom I met at a bus stop said unequivocally “I am terrified of where we now and what might happen … The working models my parents instilled into me don’t work any more. There are no jobs …”

Did anybody – I hesitate to say “in power” because that’s a relative term – think about masses of lower down the scale jobs being axed ? At that level – I lived there for a long time – you don’t work, you don’t eat. And it is happening simultaneously with the well educated, the skilled . Let’s not hire them it is too much trouble. They are replaceable.

How are we going to feed those who can’t work ? How many good minds are shelfstacking in outfits themselves under hostile takeover from machines ?

Shoppers as opposed to shopping addicts ( the first goes to buy, the second goes to spend) know that you can’t have what you want. You can only have what “they” want to sell you. 40 years ago my mother said “You have only to like something for it to be withdrawn.”

No this is not a declaration of mass victimhood but it is conjecture into what we control , really. Not very much. If the late great Aretha were singing now, the anthem would be called “Disrespect” and we are being offered political roads lined with roses. The problem is, none of them leads anywhere without immense cost and whence you do not want to go.

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Tagged blog, life, love, mental-health, writing

logbreeding

Posted on October 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

Sometimes you hit a log.

Smartasses will say “ Better than the log hitting you” but it feels similar. In my brief association with “proper journalism” (don’t ask) a brusque but likeable editor growled about my copy “There is a piece in here if we could just get to the hook…” He found it second para down, we moved it.

Please notice – all men!

Can’t find a hook.

Go back to the alphabet (there is a new book on the origins of the letters ) and the first letter is A. A for Andrew. I deeply do not want to write about Prince Andrew, everybody else has, seriously and snippily. Look.

He’s an unpleasant waster, wife similar. Daughters ? Daughters. I am deeply aware of the horrors of child abuse in whatever form, the hurt, the harm but I would rather not discuss it through the prism of Jeffrey Epstein and his dubious suicide.

Andrew is an ageing B for brat, the late Queen’s favourite and a lot of good it did him. Am I the only person more concerned about any harm he may have done when dealing with the no-flies- on-them Chinese in quasi diplomatic mode ? Or is some sexual variant always preferable popular discussion to political insecurity ?

And putting aside affection and respect, leaving an insoluble mess to your offspring is not a kindness. Whoever you are, tidy it up, tie it down. Poor old King, cancer AND Andrew.

B is for book(s), my revenge on scandalously unsatisfactory mess that terrestrial television is.

A respected industry friend said “I believe in the BBC” to which I retorted “I’d like to.” “ It’s our BBC” they sloganize ? I wish. In my favourite TV column endless sensible complaints about the music overlaying everything. Who listens ? Not a soul. We’re sick of repeats, yes we know it’s about money – what isn’t ? Not helped by enormous expense in paying legal fees to settle very public messes – only incurred on this management watch. Je reste ma valise, a phrase which was the finest moment of the non-French speaking husband of a Francophone friend..

C is for the corporate model which means everything is about money

– not service, not human kindness.- eroded in its turn by everything having to fit in with the plan. Not P is for personal just the plan. So when you do hit C is for consideration, you almost don’t believe it.

D is for darling which I am begin to understand is a word associated less with the theatre of my youth and more with age itself. My mother used it to me, it was a family endearment. (I suppose D is for dated – fine.)

We are not going to get through all 26 letters including X for mystery in one go so let me forward to R for readers and responders. After the very considerable technological mess I have been through, nothing could have been more generous than the Response of

F for friends. Without them, including one man who doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground, the lid of the Raeburn head would have exploded.

And then there was Y for YOU. People who read and responded, keeping one of my sorely tried feet on the ground. I can still make sentences, they haven’t all gone off to watch Traitors or Strictly.

They do have minds and thoughts and sensibilities and – they know what they like when they read it. T is Thank you – big thank you. Also old fashioned, don’t care, valuable phrase. One of the tall young Asian men cultivated by the friendly neighbourhood pharmacist recognizes me, thawed by assiduous politeness on both sides, and yesterday made a joke. Feet under the table, bless you. Welcome.

F is for flight of ideas

Heavily medicalized description – mine is more benign

(look it up) which is a wonderful image. Most of what I do is that or starts there. Only sometimes the ideas hide. What you write is wooden. It doesn’t cook. There isn’t a link, only the writer has to see the link though it’s wish fulfilment when other readers get it.

I used to think that I would never amount to a hill of beans because I hadn’t suffered enough. I thought I was finished at 19, I hadn’t as my pa pointed out, even started. Did I have a way to go – not a clue beyond doing my best and reading a lot. Hooray for logs.

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Tagged books, faith, fiction, life, writing

not that simple…

Posted on October 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

Apparently Mark Twain

said “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” which is one of many largely impressive, occasionally gnomic utterances about the nature of a beast for which we need to have more understanding and respect.

My sister didn’t care if she trod on your toes if she told you what she really thought. And most of us have come across someone like that. And it’s a weapon. Not only says “I see you for what you really are “ or “what it really is” – both of which are perceptions – but claims moral high ground.

The truth may be simpler but there is a way to tell it and a time to tell it.

And how long are we going to confuse therapies of the mind with media? It may feel wonderful to tell all on camera but better and safer in a more human context , from having tea or coffee privately in your kitchen with a good friend to the signed sealed and delivered locked door confidence of the talking therapies. All too soon we are in dirty linen territory, how to get back in the headlines …

The price of fame is very high. And a significant number of the people who attain it (rather than those who have it thrust upon them) have all the insight of a pine cone.

The weekend yielded three profiles – Keira Knightley, Charlie Sheen and Mick Hucknall – of whom two grew up and one is still a work in progress. Yes, one woman and two men.

After years of hounding by the press,

Knightley worked out how to evade most of the worst of them but one day, still very young, she just walked away. Her parents applauded. And she describes how for the sake of sanity she became not-Keira, until she found a way through and could breathe. She spent her 40^th birthday with her husband on a metal working course – happy.

The son of the actor Martin Sheen, Charlie hid in consumption of drugs, rewarded financially beyond the dreams of Croesus and in every other way for roles in for TV and films – married three times, paid sex with men and women and put so much up his nose and down his throat, a Mexican cartel temporarily refused to sell any more to him. Paid bounty to keep his name out of the papers about his same sex encounters.

Spent 30 years life trying to kill himself. 60, sober, watch this space.

And Hucknall, famously musically gifted, plain and charming, talks about a long journey which includes rescue by an imaginative art college and ends powerfully with knowing who he is – brought up lonely by his father after his mother left, unafraid to stop when he needed to stop, understood from early days the power of deal. And, given that we are all on the journey from youth to age, never didn’t know for long who or what or where from what he was.

Admirable.

What becomes clear is how the rewards of extreme success get in the way of health and happiness. As the Cheshire Cat says “We’re all mad here…” Everything has a price tag. Money buys perceptions or the means to block them. And appearances are deceptive.

Complications accrue around creativity and business deals, who’s involved, their axes to grind, rewards, perception – and so on. If you don’t have some sense of you, the price is unpayable – in every way.

In these three weeks plus back to internet and landline (yes, I bought a mobile, a whole other discussion), I thought about my little fame. Having my name recognised opened doors for me, it gave me pleasure. It once got me a pair of shoes reduced. Like everybody else, my self knowledge was learned. I enjoyed almost everything I did and I made fewer compromises than most. That has impact. And these three interviews make it plain that you are not ready till you are ready. Therapy may not work but it won’t if you don’t want it to. And the truth will set you free. And then it depends on how you use, for yourself and others, that freedom.