Category Archives: Uncategorized

Buns and I were discussing religion. 

He is an escaped cradle Roman Catholic.  I have all sorts of deeply held ideas and a passionate belief  that “when you look at the best mankind is doing, you can’t help but hope there is something better.”  God.  Probably closer to the Great Spirit of the Native Americans than anything else.  “And “ I said “if I waver, I have only to think of the wonders of nature – with or without explanation – to be reaffirmed.  The face of heaven.”  

I was invited to lunch by a woman I have met once, it was raining dank drizzle and I got lost.  No sense of direction till the feet know the way (see the idea of “the body remembers.”)   Coming back from the wrong way I saw a man with his hood up and the most beautiful Doberman I have ever seen.  Not hyperbole.  Enormous, tall, cropped ears, young, shining with intelligence and that strange quality which is beyond being beautiful, when it is known and accepted as part of the bearer’s responsibility. 

I stopped.  I do not approach without permission.  This is not Disney.

The owner signalled a query.  I pointed to the dog.  He turned and spoke to the dog.  I saw the balloon above the dog’s head which read an incredulous “You want me to what ?”   The man repeated himself and the dog sat down in the rain.  The man beckoned to me. 

I went forward, hands outstretched to be sniffed, which he did.   I said “Oh, you’re beautiful.” And he gambolled.  He stood up and kicked his wonderfully proportioned body in all sorts of directions, leapt and ran in a little circle before coming to me.   The man said warningly  “No..”  I said “Why ?” He said  “He’ll get mud on your coat ..”  I said as the dog closed on me “I could care less.  He’s the most beautiful thing” and the dog was tall enough to put his paws on my shoulders and his head forward, to lick my cheek.  I hugged him and said again “Oh you beauty !”  And then he sat.  Can a Doberman beam ?  

I am smiling

 And I looked at the face of the young man, smiling at me as I smiled at him.  I said “How can I ever thank you ?  You made my day” and he said  “Us too.”   And we parted in the rain.

Howletts is a Georgian house in its own grounds in which the legendary right wing gambler John Aspinall oversaw a zoo park for endangered species.  And there in one of the generous enclosures (better few and right than many and mean) Nick and I saw a clouded leopard

whose eyes were such pale green, they shaded into violet.   Neither of us spoke. The animal was there a minute or two and then gone. Nick said “Look down”.  On his shoe, paused safe for a moment because we were still, was a harvest mouse, with his long tail. 

And still we stayed till he left.

Among 723 channels offering brainrot, there are three wildlife programmes and sometimes my day is made by a cloud of deer drifting towards the waterhole.   I saw a man who had induced a certain ant to carry more sugar water to his orchards and thus the animals and the trees flourished.  The film of the labour was fascinating and I am bad at bugs.

I think of the strange implacable beauty of my mother’s face the night my father died, when she said “I have so much grief inside me, I feel I must give birth it.” And she began to rock in mourning, a behaviour I had only read about and never seen.

V arrived yesterday, after a gap of it doesn’t matter how many years, a friend of my son’s who always loved me, lost touch, got in touch and came to see me – no cumbersome explanations about “I should have…” or “Why didn’t you .. “   – bearing a home made loaf and raisin buns, the mushrooms I had asked her to pick up if she had time, strawberries (“every girl deserves strawberries in the winter !”)  and yellow roses, the face of heaven.

I have written a lot,

I don’t get tired of it, it’s my thing, particularly in this form.  In past contexts, I had to deal with editors and deputy editors and the oftentimes stand off between them (and not get caught in the melee), subeditors (a good one can make you, a bad one .. !), the brief – and so on.  

So I was shocked when AJ said “It doesn’t matter if nobody reads it…”.  Oh yes it does.   That’s like saying it doesn’t matter how much I talk – oh yes it does.   However attenuated, this is one side of dialogue.  

40 plus years ago, a woman interviewing me remarked that I seemed to remember every kind or nice thing I had ever experienced.  Obviously the comment made an impression.  You risk sounding precious (ugh), self aggrandising (guilty – ego like a house) but I would rather that than endless child picking at bloody graze, recital of bad news, which must then be interpreted from this angle and that.  

We all know people with more money.  We all know people with worse luck.  Hitting the balance between knowing it could be better and knowing how much worse it could be is the beginning of the appreciation of chance. 

Being lucky.

Lucky doesn’t cost.  It comes.  Unless you are a complete mug, you note it – quietly as you paddle round frying onions and sipping the drink you now only have occasionally, openly to at least yourself in recognition about what could have gone wrong.

There is big lucky ie  the bomb hits, or the killers come.  But you’re not there.   Big lucky is when the chancy operation comes good.  Big lucky is when you miss the train that crashes.  And you come to see things as big lucky as in, if you hadn’t passed or failed or gone here or done that – this person, this opportunity, this life would not be as it is – you’d have missed a chance. 

You were just  – lucky.

And there is little lucky.   You choose the right gift for your notoriously difficult partner or her mother or his father.   The bank makes a mistake and it’s bit better than you thought.   You decide, Devil take the hindmost, that you will wear those old shoes (well brushed of course)

rather than the new ones to the party or the wedding or dinner with your daughter’s future in laws for the first time – and thank heaven, because you need all the help you can get, comfort being a good place to start. You need to be thinking about the matter in hand, not worrying that your feet hurt. Lucky.

I was asked by a therapist “Why did you go to America ?” (when I was 19 and stayed just under 2 years.)  I said “Running away, I expect.”  He said quietly “I think you were running to …”   And then explained – my role in the family, the difficulties, the distance and the freedom of it.   And it made sense.  Lucky.  And when I went back to the US in my first almost non secretarial role, I used all sorts of experiences I didn’t know I had absorbed and – if that wasn’t lucky enough – I used the second exposure where nobody who knew me could see me and any embarrassment was strictly my own, to better effect when I got my break in Britain.   And I gave up trying to be an actress  (I would surely have been an addict or a drunk) and fell into radio.  Where nobody cared what I looked like – only how I sounded.  Lucky.      

All this was described back to me as “a perfect life”.   No, I don’t do perfection.  I am very happy to leave that to the majesty of nature and the might of heaven. 

But lucky ?  Yes.  

Now, all of us who are older would tell you how lucky we were to go here, or meet that one, or work at so-and-so when it was new.   We can’t offer that world to anybody else, we haven’t got it.  This morning a noticeably unhysterical neighbour said in conversation “We are on the brink of World War III and nobody wants to talk about it.”  

Unless we’re lucky.

I ‘d like a hoarding

– you know, one of those big billboards – one I could have whitewashed every couple of weeks to add the same thought smaller and add to it, or change it all together.  

Alongside the upswing into technology is the knowledge that, for the first time in British history, over half the population

is over 65 –  a significant number of whom don’t have computers and the rest, and even if they did, don’t like them, don’t trust them, have had bad experiences with them and finally, would prefer a person. 

Please note – not all of these people fall into the category of  “vulnerable” ie not all of us are on benefits or out to lunch.   The systems are open to fault like people (!), only work when they work and if we get across them – or they across us – the way back is tricky. 

Re the NHS, yes, by all means use all the AI etc that is useful but remember that if you are old and frightened, most of us would prefer a human voice rather than a generated one.   Same if you’re younger.  Same if you are one of a very large number of humans.   Animals need voices.

The new energy company sent flowers with a card which says in part “ … hope the transition has been painless”.  It hasn’t..  Describing the hiccups to Bel (a management consultant) she said “sounds like a classic case of expanding too fast and not training people properly.”  Wal went further.  “The energy companies have to get their heads round providing for older people, for people who, by choice or some form of impairment, can’t deal with computers, bills on line, etc.   New companies have to build in a personal facility for dealing with this

rather than just hoping it will be all right. Either that or they can’t offer that facility.” And probably not with uproar in other involved quarters, ie BT and the Post Office, to name but two.

If an energy company said it would come and look at the meters prior to fitting a smart meter – this was the way forward – I would go along with it.   I am still haunted by the fact that my readings are excessive and we just go trundling on.  Nobody knows or cares  – as long as you pay.

  Nice polite rip off.

John Lewis and Waitrose plan to reduce their workforce by 11,000.   What is to stop them running two ideas concurrently – how about Waitrose Auto  – smaller shops completely automated –  and Waitrose Hand (as in helping hand) where you shop and have staff ?  Lidl have great staff, it’s part of their appeal. It’s about management as well as money.   Many of us shop most days for company, exercise, exchange.  It is a fundamental part of social medicine.  

And you have to think about prevention to take some small part of the weight off the current treatment model – which has created dependence it now can’t service.

According to a promotional ad running on tv for therapy – oh you’re going to find hope and peace and understanding in therapy … With luck and the right therapist, you very well may do … but only with the sound of the human voice.  Face to face has got to be better. Exchange is not always verbal. 

The other day, coming home with my hands full of shopping a tall elderly man moved to my right, right out of my way so that I could continue unimpeded.   The movement was noticeable because other people were about, it wasn’t a quiet street.  So I paused to summon  all my mother’s charm and sent it winging out towards him.  “Thank you” I said and he beamed. 

Every time I read that the human brain works faster and more incisively than any computer,

I think “Yah ! Boo ! Sucks to you !”   and target another grin, another pleasantry, another unheard of compliment.   You don’t get a “hit” every time but you get enough hits to know that you’re right, it works, it’s the sound and the context of humanity – across age, class, ethnicity – do it.  Be nice.  Cheaper than Botox, makes you feel good too.  It’s the sound of the voice.    

For years, we went to shops and stores to look, to see what we’d chose if we could have our hearts’ desire, and dream

even if we couldn’t possibly afford it.   Shopping was at least as much wishes as wallet.

As London is being torn down and built anew simultaneously, I shelved my first shopping choice (Harrods has the brand I want, the only reason for me to go past the door) because you can’t get anywhere easily.  Instead I went to

Space NK’s sparkly deluxe flagship store, on the off chance.   Nowadays I am a cynical shopper. I exist to have a nice surprise. 

They stocked the brand I wanted but everything offered is laced with hyaluronic acid, booster, brightener, anti-ageing agent, SP100 – promoted to the power of ten with that oversell that is the hallmark of modern life.   Miracles to be wrought with cream

and the prices are eye watering.  I asked for what I wanted (a pure cream designed for children, half the price).  They don’t carry the children’s range (in one of the few postcodes in London where the parents could afford it) and no attempt was made to get it for me.  

In other words, I can only buy what you want to sell me.

I looked in Boots, a shadow of itself: I looked in M&S, nothing I wanted. I don’t buy cheap for the sake of it if there is something I know of for a bit more that I know will work. I looked in a second bigger Boots which had some of a popular range I like but again, they could only sell me what they had.

So I went to Harrods, climbing round the road works, where I met Cesca (the last two syllables of Francesca) who produced what I wanted, told me it was unlikely to continue long in manufacture (I am writing to the company),

French name, German owner, US office!

and walked me over to the only alternative she could think of.  Exemplary.

When I asked the assistant of the recommended range if she had anything I could read, she produced a one day sample (good manners forbade that I should tell her than almost anything works once, so not impressive) and when I looked at the leaflet she gave me, it is in Arabic.  Sadly beyond me.

The very agreeable young woman whose advice I sought on the Chanel counter told me they had endless problems with supply – and although she could show me samples of something I might like, they weren’t actually in stock. And she was politely rueful about the world famous brand.

I had heard the story in another big store.

I came home to an article promoting a new Steven Spielberg series (also a world famous brand) called Masters of the Air, described by a prestigious war writer as “as near to real life combat as you can get.”  Watching Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) was described as like experiencing the Second World War.   You don’t have to sell me a war.

We’ve got Ukraine slogging it out, currently discovering how distasteful international politics can be when you go out of fashion and the Israel/Gaza confrontation currently playing at six of Hamas, half a dozen of Benyamin Netanyahu.  Ghastly.  While the Yemeni war has had a tenth bloody birthday.  And all the others we never talk about because they don’t involve us, or very many of us.

Three years ago, I was solicited for a contribution to wikipedia which I often find a good starting place.  The request was short, polite and realistic.   I paid up and was thanked.  If you put this year’s appeal in fiction, it would be over the top.  When I declined I referred to it as “hyperbolic sub-sales cant.”  Not brief, not dignified, the written version of that unending harangue with which so much of media is characterised

Don’t the editorial staff (written, radio and tv), the sellers of much reduced amounts of advertising and the sales and advertising staff of every product from household bleach to my few treasured cosmetics understand that this kind of promotion is counterproductive ?  The younger among us have grown up with it and can tune it out.  I just want to switch it off for something simpler.

In conversation about the RAF retaliation against the Houthis and the build up of aggression relating to trade via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, a friend said  “… and of course because so many people  believe in nothing,

there is no comfort” – I am paraphrasing.   And I remember looking at a couple of things on my mantel, at the themes of objects and images that occur and recur in my home and thinking “household gods.”  I learned that phrase in the Latin division at grammar school when I was 12 or 13.   Touchstones, things that suggest a standard (originally used for gold), remind me of good things – love, continuum, courage, another world – interestingly a touchstone

was sometimes made of jasper, itself a stone of strength and well being.

And although it is getting a whipping internationally,  I am very glad I grew up  with a broadbased liberal interpretation of the world with a strong sense of rules that were not to be broken alongside every other kind of knowledge I was open to acquire and knowing that to change one’s mind was sometimes a strength and not a weakness – and to seek understanding of the difference.

The Wellcome Foundation (Britain’s leading scientific charity, valued at £38 billion) has mounted an exhibit called The Cult of Beauty and the art critic Waldemar Januszczak in reviewing it refers to us as obsessed with beauty. 

And that made me think. 

I looked up obsession.   I looked up fixation.   Both denote unbalance, ill health even.  And I asked myself about what was I obsessed ?   Certainly not major money or beauty.  Other people’s business..  Power  ? not me.  Success ?  Always relative.  Being accepted ?  Past my teenage years, no. I thought about my parents and the word obsession was missing from my upbringing.  You made the best of yourself, you did the best you could, you tried at your exams, that’s what they taught me

– and armed me with two strategies which can only grow better with using, which have served me admirably well – communication and good manners.   

I’m not obsessed with communication but I mourn the decline in its perception and want shout with joy when I meet a young woman like Raisa (Bulgarian, I asked) yesterday, who was a lesson in retail – informed, communicative, willing.  

Like the young man (20, I asked), Asian, who sniffed and blotted his nose twice as discreetly as he could next to me on the bus so that I touched him arm and said into his ear “Take two” offering him the tissues.  “I am sorry” he said.  “It’s the cold…” I agreed, and added “May I ask how old you are ?  He told me and I said, still into his ear” Well done you, for being able to take a tissue from an old white woman with grace” and we beamed at each other.  I suppose really, you can’t separate  communication and good manners in these stories.

Politeness is seen as a weakness.  I see it as strength.  It makes it possible for me to account for myself.   And people are not taught to communicate.   A little girl (8) of my acquaintance is dealing with a year of upheaval and change –  divorced mother has moved  manfriend in (he likes both the ex husband and the child, that’s a good start), moved premises, change of school, father has a serious new relationship  – and she has withdrawn into the commonplaces and silence. 

In a similar circumstance, my family would have gently explained over and over that I could always come to them, that I could always ask questions, nothing was too difficult – they loved me, they were there.  Was I ever lucky ?  And on my inner ear, I can hear that young mother telling me her side of the story, how busy she is, how tired – and wanting to shake her and say “Yes, but you’re the adult – get on with it.  What about the child ?”  You don’t buy communication and good manners in the supermarket, under home products.  You have to teach them and there is no point in obsessing about them or anything else, if you won’t face up to what’s there, chose and do the work.

Do you think that the more and the longer you build up to something (ie Christmas and New Year), the further to fall in comedown when it’s all over ?  

And over so fast.   Buns calling from Mayo remarked  “ those discarded trees in the street say it all.”  And poor old January, despised of months – the weather chills, the bills come in, those so-and-so resolutions,  remaindered as a long series of pieces about joining the gym or LinkedIn, laying off alcohol, any excuse to go away, everything deferred

surfaces again.

A couple of days before Christmas, I greeted a young Asian with “Good morning” on the way to get the paper.   He stared.  “Good morning” I insisted, smiling.  He grinned, taken aback, got on his bike and called back to me “God bless you, lady.”   “You too” I called, waving and he waved too.  A living Christmas card with a phrase from a book or a film.  

I spent Christmas morning – candles lit in every room, yes, even the bathroom –      in bed with strong coffee, the best panettone

and my first ever John Banville called April in Spain which is not a new book but was recommended as prep for his new one by a thoughtful reviewer.

This is not a course open to anyone with young children or a pet or a dependent of any kind.  It was open to me and I loved it.  I read the book to the end, about 2.30.  I can’t remember anything on terrible tv except a news check. 

On New Year’s Day my son asked what I wanted for the ensuing year and I retorted  “You mean apart from a change in government …?”    He asked again when I saw him and I said easier movement walking, we talked about physio and I told him my best news was goodbye to the energy company that has caused me so much distress.

We all have desperate moments. 

Something happens that is outside the normal run of things and this is often heightened by being one of a couple, the other of whom is generally insouciant, believing somebody else will deal with whatever it is (usually you), or by being alone, when there isn’t anybody with whom to share your absurd but powerful sense of dread.  

And it is terror.  You wake at four, you sweat, you scheme and you try to talk firmly to yourself – don’t be silly, of course you can manage – but you don’t feel or think you can.  Once in conversation with a woman talking about being rescued,

I said, “What you want is a knight on a white charger.  I am just sure that if he turned up, he’d be rude, the horse would stand on my foot and I would get (excuse me) shit on my shoe !”  And we laughed, good old Anna.  Not much of her in evidence at the hands of edf.

My rescuers were private people.   If I wrote about them, they’d hate it but they knocked the  longed for knightly rescuer into his own helmet.  And I live to fight another day.   As did the subpostmasters.

If you ever wanted proof of the value of a television dramatization, it would be Mr. Bates versus the Post Office. 

It made accessible a frighteningly debased story – the brutalisation to death in four cases, 33 dead while the cases remain unresolved – of decent hardworking often very useful people at the hands of their managers, mechanical and allegedly human.  Their worst fears were realised.

It highlights how helpless we are in the face of the so called “big boys”.  I think of the taxi driver turning thorough Hyde Park Corner years ago, saying to me “Very few of us ever get up off our knees.  We’re afraid of being shot at “  and the Chancellor on the news yesterday  saying “the government will do everything it can.”  So – when ?   The Post Office cannot pay and if the government offers to, that’s every tax payer.  Their money is our money. This is no longer a story on the inside pages.   The police are involved with the unenviable task of retrospective investigation.    And as Michael Flanders once sang “Back to bloody January again !”   

I hope you have a lovely time. I hope somebody helps you clear up and I hope you have a breather. Me too – first of two weeks’ off.

Brain in a loop, till soon.

Back week commencing 8th January 2024.

The Liberty bodice

was warm cotton, no sleeves, buttons down the front I could do up and two buttons at the bottom, front and back, for suspenders.  These came from the haberdashers, a tiny shop with drawers and glass fronted cases, mysteries full of cotton (now thread) and fastenings and embroidered handkerchiefs with “out the back” which my mother explained was women’s underwear.  Men’s was bought separately.  And I had woollen stockings.  I predate tights.  (The fashion then changed to warm knickers with pockets for a handkerchief if you wore them for gym or where you kept the house key in school: and over the knee long socks.)

The stockings were used for Christmas.

In annalog/the Christmas itch I wrote about a dream Christmas tree and decorating it with all the lovely things discovered, remembered and intangible, instead of glitter and lights.  Most of the stuff I remember shines on its own. 

In my childhood stocking there were all sorts of little things – my mother called them “sillies”

– and there would be one of those puzzles you couldn’t work out.  You put it aside and went back to it after the Christmas meal when we sat in the warmth and read the Christmas magazines (no television).   

Imagining a puzzle, I think of how people do and don’t relate to each other – how they think they do, but they don’t. In interview an Israeli peace activist was asked if his views stayed the same.  He answered yes.  How could that be ? asked the reporter.  “Hamas killed my mother as an act of war on October 7” he replied.  “We were not at peace before.”

I think of the people I know that I don’t know – not really – bits, bits over years but what you learn is habits, behaviours, responses but that person remains like the links I fiddled with long ago, out there somewhere,

beyond …

The point of the remembered stocking was not excess but enough, enough because it was all surprises, good will, time passing from daybreak, into which you awoke before Christmas came, waiting to see.

I’d have family for my imaged stocking – about a million miles away from the sentimental EastEnders claptrap – an immensely powerful unit, for good or ill, socially, politically, emotionally.. 

And I think of meeting a woman in a headscarf at a bus stop with whom I had a good natured, waiting for the bus, conversation.

She suddenly dashed back to the block where she said they lived, returning with a piece of fresh cake for me.  Stunned, I thanked her.  She had a daughter she said, she baked.  I saw her several days later, waved and said the cake was delicious !  She beamed.  And then coming home in the cold and dark, I saw her get out of a car with a big bespectacled man and a girl of about 13.  She recognised me as I reached for the girl’s hand and explained what had happened.  “I won’t keep you in the cold and I know Christmas is not your thing” I said “but I wish you some time together and a really good New Year.” And we all beamed at each other. 

I’ll have them in my stocking.

And the beautiful lady from Bermuda, fine features, skin like copper, who in a conversation outside a shoe store said “Oh you’ve made me laugh !  That’s all you need  – faith in God and a sense of humour ! “   And when things go unexpectedly well for me I say “God smiled” the Master of my Universe.  Laughter would go in my stocking, where would we be without it ?. 

In the stocking of my imagination would be memory – the smell of my son’s skin as a baby and nights in Crete with the salt from the sea and the herbs and leaves.  Clean towels and fish and chips on a cold day.  All the unexpected kindnesses, intangible joy of words to reach and touch – free,

freely given, freely received. 

And there is an old exercise of which I never tire: just as you think of the all the things that have gone wrong – it happens to us all – so list the good ones.   I do – and they go in the stocking.

I was going to write this anyway. 

I didn’t need the Centre for Social Justice report  to tell me that there are two nations – the have’s and the have nots.   And that as the haves got more, the have nots got less. I’ll leave the “up” because not a day goes by without us being told about yachts, millionaire hotels, extravagant properties, £1000 for breakfast – gelt gelt gelt.  Sometimes you wish they’d eat the money and choke.   But the down have been faced with cruel social arithmetic fed into dysfunction by the unobtainability and unsuitability of the dream machine Aldous Huxley called soma and we know as television. 

And mine is the simple model.

The Centre was founded by a Conservative so the party has come a long way from its tradition of help for the poor. Never mind what it called the others (this is the classic story of us and them), never mind the terminology for its help.  To hell with what you call help as long as it helps..

But the present systems have imploded. 

Some of the figures for mental ill health among children are exaggerated.  Whereas in my generation, even a partial diagnosis (whether for child or adult) gave you a direction to go in, now it gives you a label under which to behave. An accredited psychologist, working with the young, commented that some of ADHD diagnoses she was seeing were inaccurate, more to do with family behaviour and lack of structure.  I am sure you too could write about lack of structure.   One of the great British ills is lack of management,

…but it is easier to leave a job than a family!

in families, in businesses, anywhere.

But children and young people are unwell.  Boys and young men are increasingly at risk of suicide. The figures for addictions and domestic abuse are through the roof  (almost certainly related), all exacerbated by poor housing, the disparity between benefits and poor pay so it isn’t worth working at low paid jobs, family breakdown and school absence.

And for us (forget “them”) money is worth less and less.   The report says lockdown is the dynamite that blew everything up.  

But this isn’t new.  It’s been coming since I worked at the old Talk Radio on the third floor above Oxford Street and looking down on a sea of black, a sprinkling of denim, but lots of people dressed in black, I thought  “The new Victorians.”

I remember the falling away of the pressure groups and helpful associations which gave so many support while they sorted out how to go on, when things had gone wrong.   Technology has taken over the NHS and I am here to tell you that  a couple of weeks ago  I could not access the programme they used, they subsequently sent me an incorrect email address so when I tried that it bounced back while the last ditch morning of the appointment telephone number (theirs, printed) wasn’t answered, even by machine, three times  – from the time of opening, 15 minutes later, and fifteen minutes after that.  I am not seriously ill but I wonder what would happen if I were.  NHS 111 is now medical students reading prepared text.  God forbid you should ask a question and get an answer.

Some years ago, responding to a terribly ill friend on the far side of London, I rode late night and early morning buses from time to time.  And I remember the tangible utter weariness on those buses.  The carol says  “Silent night, holy night”

but those people were quiet because they hadn’t the energy to speak.  They were hanging on by their fingernails.  I wonder how many have dropped off into cold (punitive heating bills), poor diet (cold bad food – so nothing heals), broken hearts and sullen deprivation.

A favourite television column asked its readers – what do you think of tv in 2023 ?   My reply is unprintable.  The BBC is in default of its own remit, and wants more money to offer unthought repeats times 10, endless quizzes, and gladiators of goo (not one cooking programme about “making do” or nutrition).   Surely the mark of a gifted presenter is that he or she can make anything interesting ?   

Yes, this is a grump but it’s worth remembering, you only complain when you care.     

It’s one of those four letter words,

like kind and love and like and hate and road – this last in tribute the Romanian who rang the programme  I did about  four letter words, having explained no, I was not inviting bad language, to say it was her most important four letter word.  When I asked why, she explained “It can take you to something you want very much, and away from something you dread.”  I told her I couldn’t express that in Romanian,  I will never forget her. And real is a powerful little word.

It’s the opposite of fake. 

  “It looked so real” we say and it is a profound compliment.  “He’s just such a fake” we say of a politician we don’t trust, a public personality (usually an actor) we can’t like.  Real food tastes quite different from the made up stuff and real trouble is real (underlined) trouble – in health, or debt, or relationships, personal or professional.

Part of my Christmas for the last three years has been a craft fair sponsored by Selvedge magazine. 

  I can’t remember how I got to the first – there’s a shop with the same name, I  probably rang them, I’d read their publication – but I moved heaven and earth to go the next a year later.  I found small special things, I looked and admired.  Even the colour palette is uplifting.   And this year reserving the tickets proved unbelievably complicated until the wonderfully named Hester said “I am sending you two free admission, print it out , forget it, nobody should have to go through this.” 

So Annie and I went yesterday, to a beautiful church (St.Mary’s, Wyndham Place )

where the fair was twice as big as before and well lit and for nearly three hours all you heard was the happy buzz of people talking and making room for one another, and everything was real – wood, cotton in many forms, wool, velvet, gold, vermeil and silver. We didn’t buy very much, we wandered around happily, we came out into the hush of the back doubles of Marylebone,  And I fell.

I don’t know how I did this — not drunk, no difficult shoes, beshert. 

I missed my teeth, my nose, ankles, neck, even my glasses. I have a black eye which swelled up immediately and my left knee is bruised and grown painful so I shall have arthritis in both.  Oh joy.

The pharmacist was sensible, had no ice pack and warned me that on blood thinners, one of the post stroke medicines, the bruising would be considerable.  And it is.  Was I dizzy, pain in the head, blurring of vision ?  No.   I bought arnica.  We found an ice pack in the second chemist and had a late lunch/early supper in a restaurant I know where, as we waited for the bill, a handsome woman with a tiny mark under her right eye, came over and said “I can’t leave without saying to you, that will look so much better in a week  !”

It was all real, real kindness, real consideration, real knowledge.   Like the Bulgarian who sat next to me yesterday, before I had the black grape special under my eye, whose English was not fluent but remarkably pure.  He was surrounded by a miasma of loneliness. And we managed a real conversation, real good wishes, real exchange.  And he saluted as he got off the bus with the raised fist of solidarity.

That’s only happened to me once before, and never from a European.

While on the bus home I sat next to a young woman (she looked 10 years younger than she said she was, from Kildare) with her arms full of a splendid seven month old called Huck – as in Huckleberry Finn . And we talked about the Irish and how my father had told me  “When you go there, remember, they are not English – the Romans never got there.  They have their own history…”  When she got off the bus, she hugged me round Huck and kissed my cheek – “Don’t change” she said.

You remember that tree I wrote about that I imagined hung with all the good and kind things that have happened to me ?

I think it’s real.