Category Archives: Uncategorized

His first marriage lasted years until it became clear that his ex wife was an alcoholic

(by which time  God knows what damage was done to the children) and he ( a high achieving  businessman, no fool) had a nervous collapse, was hospitalised for three months and had some therapy.  

His second wife was a joy and died  of cancer.   His beloved dog died of the same cancer and then he met Marian (not her real name).   A challenging  funny  relationship ensued.  She had a  daughter from an earlier marriage, was retraining after years as an academic to be a teacher.  He loves a project and this was a project with companionship – and yes that’s the polite way of saying sex.  

And he married her. 

  If he had mentioned that to me, I would have jumped up and down and screamed.  Too  soon too soon, why why, whose idea was this ?  No fool like an old fool.   Marriage does not necessarily make everything wonderful.   It mostly sets new challenges.  You don’t know enough about her.   (Keeping utterly private and away from him  my doubt, my queries, my cynicism – heard this story before and I don’t like the ending.  A dear friend and his partner learned the hard way that  civil partnership, like  marriage, awards a 50/50 split: you may have done it for  tax reasons but the law is the law. so now we have  two people unhappy in a different way, still in the same house and I bet the dogs have headaches.)

When I didn’t hear from him over Christmas, I thought he was busy.  He is very active in the Church, singing, administration, devoted.  So I wrote in the New Year  by  which time we all knew somebody who had been unpleasantly ill, and back came his synopsis of a nasty story in which  significantly his priest who knows the lady from church, has offered to help.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.

At best you learn about yourself and not all of that is pleasant.   At worst you don’t learn  which is even worse.   And nobody  knows  how the private  relationship  functions, what you or I would have seen as an amber light, or even a red one.   And Marian  is retraining to be a teacher !!!   Oh I do hope the vetting procedures tighten up soon.

In marked contrast a talented masseur was recommended to me and she comes to the house.  I don’t think I have anything particularly amiss in that direction except  bed rest and the silver linings that brought are nails on every finger – first time for years – and marked amelioration of arthritis.  Anyway, I like her, she’s affordable, she came.

Wonderfully straight forward, she was born in South Africa and is gay.  Fine.  Yesterday  she mentioned “my son”.  I said “So you were married ?”   No.  She decided she wanted children.  She went through the not unusual experience of failed fertility treatment, relationship breakdown under her insistence that this was what she wanted, but eventually she got  twin sons who have magnificently  Biblical name so I shall call them Cain and Abel which they are not.

They’re ten and she loves them.   She talked about them a little  – and I realized that although I know of this, this was my first  direct experience.  And it was good in every way as far as I could see.  Her mother (her parents are long divorced) in a  care home in SA helped,  her mother’s closest  old friend  (clinical psychologist) made contacts here, it was positive.  Uplifting.

I am not yet  ordinarily mobile and I miss the people  I meet  at the bus stand, in the shops, on the street but it is clear that that  front  door of mine is only the one door.   Other doors remain very much open – as do my ears, as does my heart.

However widely on line  relationships are accepted, I am old school, yes, and old.  I want to see you, look at your skin and what you do with your hands when you are talking, using all those human antennae for which I have such admiration – not because they are always “right”  but because they are always useful.  I’ve never seen a door as other than a way in.    

Gardening is a lot like dealing with people.  You can learn all sorts of stuff,  know this friend or that who is very good at gardening – but the plants will do what they do.  And the connections, the similarities, the roots and rhizomes, they will still do what they do too.  Like the sea thistle

I chose with love, had potted  for me by Josh who is a professional gardener: it bloomed once and gave up.  Josh says it happens.  I felt I had failed.

With people as with plants there are wonderful one offs.   Katherine arrived at my door and said “I saw you.”  Mouth agape, I stared at her.   “ I saw you” she said again “and you were ill.  So I made you some soup.” 

She made me the best of broths which I have named Malka – the Hebrew word for beautiful – and, survivor of childhood illness, emotional vandalism on the part of her mother and four years of bronchitis when she came from SA to England,  she is the first person to recognize the  toll this  was  going to take of me.  She stopped me and I immediately apologized “I have kept you too long …”   “No” she said “that is how you spend energy and Anna, you haven’t got it. 

You need to rest.  That is your work now.”

My second Christmas card arrived on New Year’s Eve.  It read “(sorry about the card Anna).  It’s Carly from the back garden.  Haven’t seen you

and me and the shop are worried.  Hope all is OK.   Love “– and her telephone number.   I had learned to limit my calls so I had to wait to ring back and then I said “Carly – it’s Anna” and the voice came back ”Omigawd, I’m so glad to hear from you.”     The shop is where she and I often meet with her big sweet dog Nula and where I buy the newspapers which I stopped even thinking about.    In the course of that conversation, she said something which is a profound statement of her background, mine and where we come from – “so great to hear your voice” she said.  “I was afraid it would be a man.”  Because when you die, your male relatives, the doctor, the vicar, the police make the call.   In the context of not knowing, male voices mean bad news.

The nicest meter reader on the 6 Jan said as she came down the hall “Did you have a nice Christmas ?” and I said “I don’t know, I lost it.”  She was immediately sympathetic and told my next door neighbour Sarah who has always been kind if not close.  Sarah bought me apple juice and I can see her in the red woolly hat that suits her well handing me the carton and tulips.

  “Late Christmas present” she said.  “Just get better.”

My nearest and dearest are not near – Ginny is in Warwickshire, Snowdrop is in Northumberland.  Buns is busy surviving and SR is in Gloucester, my son has a killer schedule – but they stuck.  When I asked everybody not to phone – they emailed.   Never was a woman more fortunate.  I found my way back to watching something I enjoyed on television – thin on the ground but I found it.  I ate supper and sat in a chair. 

I began reading Yellowface which is intelligently written if depressing and two chapters in when I hesitated, I found the writer had described this as a book about loneliness.  That I could relate to, not endless technology and wanting success, not a friend in sight and anxiety bouncing off the page.  But using it as a reader got me back to re read Pale Rider, Laura Spinney’s history of  the Spanish Flu.

I shall always remember Carly’s deep fruit and nut voice saying “But Anna what is it ?”   and me saying  “It’s flu Carly and it killed millions of people worldwide in  1918.”

The simplest actions require energy I didn’t know I used.  Bath shower and hair drying is soon but not yet, and every day in an adventure, a slow adventure because my age is an added complication to recovery as well as illness.  Now I am up against that strange modern denial which elides “Oh you were ill?” into “but you’re better now.”   

Not so fast, Kleinfelder.  Every year a small number of people have a bad time with influenza I have made it thus far, graduated through the illness programme.  I am a flu grad.

I did something completely different for Christmas 2024 – I lost it

Last day I remember a bit of was 23 December when I was told I had a cold and a virus, it was a nasty virus (usual adjective) and I had the additional complication of being 80.

Last week my “hands” rang me and I was somewhere at the bottom of a bin.    She had the same  bug but she is half my age.  Her daughter aged 15 threw it off, it has lingered in the form of a cold for her and I said  annalog ? not a hope …

and here we are a week later. 

I got better, I got worse, and developed an attack of bile vomiting – hooray for the internet, the  Mayo Clinic (clearly  written), NHS Online Direct (ditto)  and I rang the GP on Monday 6 after Saturday and  Sunday on water and Carrs Water Biscuits, no  throwing up, no energy .   He reassured me that the spell of being sick might be this or that or the other (no takeway I promise) but was most likely the bug working its way through the body with the additional complication of my age.

So keep warm, call in help, rest and drink water.

I won’t list the kindness because I might miss somebody out. Can’t read, can’t think – it comes to something when you can’t complete a task like a small amount of washing up without sitting down but a little at a time, slow progress and you will either wish me well or give up and go away to read about Elon Musk.   Who is younger prettier richer and a lot less reliable than me.

I will return when I can, I wish you all the good things for New Year that I was so fortunate to receive over the passage from Old Year to New, so charmed to receive, more later almost inevitably (a colleague once remarked “ you seem to remember  every good thing that was ever done for you”) -but I couldn’t remember how to redial a missed call

till soon

Because Christmas

and thus New Year fall mid week, we’re all going to be drowning in the holiday season, people are going away (hooray) and life will be a different shape except for those for whom it never is.  

I learned at nearly 13 that Christmas isn’t immovably wonderful which is probably why I feel so strongly about keeping the good bits fresh.  We say “don’t look back” but you do at Christmas, and in New Year, because if you have no memories you have no future – even if you are making memories for the first time this year.

I came out of Waterstones grinning from ear to ear, having seen all four of my favourite assistants in one go.  They are subject to some internal company rota, I see one or two at the most but they are all wonderful and it was a real pre Christmas boost.

As I emerged a woman backed into me and I said teasingly “Have you not got eyes in the back of your head?” and repeated it gently.  She laughed.  I was so proud that she laughed,

I went back to tell her – how lovely to make her laugh.  She said “I thought I would never laugh again,”  I asked why.  She said “Because my son was killed 48 hours ago.”  I asked what happened – it sounds like a stroke and for whatever reason it wasn’t picked up on fast enough – she said “I think it was because he was black, they thought he was drunk” – deteriorated and died.  I took her hands, I said how sorry I was very quietly and wished her peace.   

And I was very struck when a nothing if not positive friend remarked that this year, something is missing.  Well quite a lot is missing actually and the gap will not be plugged with elaborate meals and endless sweet stuff.   If you can afford it.  You have to believe in something,

even if it is only yourself.

This government is no better at communication that the last lot.   Sure, we’re in the financial cart for almost everything but there are better ways to introduce it to the beleaguered public than long , boring perorations.   Learn how to talk to people – in the stocking for the cabinet.  I mention this  (again) because it isn’t that they could do it better but they could package it better which would reduce the sting.

All I can remember about my Christmas stocking is that it was a wonderful knobbly surprise, which is what made it exciting.   The best thing in my stocking this Christmas would be peace – in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and the list goes on.   I have learned to cherish peace, not just as the opposite of war – but as a state of mind.  

Yesterday a family up the road (ma, pa and “nearly 13” year old son) invited me to lunch.  The house shone, the food was lovely, the effort was generous.   Generosity goes in the stocking. And awareness and when to say “can’t do that any more “and withdraw for your own peace.

Ginny’s sister has an equally  particular nickname so I didn’t recognize her full name on the back of the cards she has begun to design and sell as part of recovery from a long and challenging marriage, three children and loss of self – self everything.  When I recognized  it, I wrote to her – She wrote back.  Worth jewels.  In the stocking.

All I recall about New Year was staying up  to see the New Year in  – which really meant listening to Big Ben on the then Home Service. My parents had a drink  – one drink, usually rum, the cheapest spirit – and I had a thimbleful with hot water and sugar.

This year has seen the failure of organized religion to offer the consolation we had thought to have from it, your religion or mine, the failure of theocracy to observe human decencies, to negotiate.

A Scottish neighbour who came to do me a kindness said the greatest failure was to cease to  talk – to talk across fear, stand off, difference – “because once that door is closed …” he said and shook his head. 

Whatever he has done or not done in Israel, you can’t deny that the chief US negotiator Anthony Blinken has worked at it.

We cannot know what efforts have been made in our names in a vast complicated state such as we live in.  We used to trust it but now we doubt it and doubt is a poor bedfellow.

So New Year is perhaps more important this year than often.  We need to believe  better is to come. 

So I shall light candles to that, and pray to all my gods, and for you who have walked the annalog walk for a long time.    

Back the week of 6 January 2025 and peace in your house.

Alison Uttley wrote a series of children’s books about Little Grey Rabbit, Squirrel and Hare.

They came in square pale grey slender hardbacks and my mother approved of the degree to which the animals were rendered cosy for children, in other words still recognizable as animals, for example, she remarked on Hare’s frock coat.    And it was Hare who proposed a toast  – “ old friends to meet, old wood to burn, old wine to drink.”   Which for some reason stuck with me. 

I could understand that you were supposed to keep friends so I could see that old friends would be important.  I couldn’t get my head round old wood.  Our wood (coal fires) came in small handy cords from the grocer.  I don’t remember having much of it to hand and if there was it was in the  coal hole, not piled up  – we never kept it long enough.  I learned later that old wood burns better .  And I knew nothing about wine,

except it featured in some stories, in glasses or special bottles.

Over time I learned it was a Scottish toast and it says a lot in a few words.  We think of catching up  at Christmas, hence the cards  if not the meeting.  But friendship is no more static than anything else.   Who you stay friends with, why and what changes is a book subject. 

Old wood to burn could also refer to the rubbish, the stuff you’re always promising yourself to deal with, the habits that one year you just can’t keep to – it’s not the same, you don’t want to pretend.  You make different arrangements, or none.

And I appreciate wine but I can’t tell you I have ever gone out vintage hunting except  for somebody else ( and only two of them).

But the toast lingered – like a sort of promise to the future.  That if you went back and met old friends , some of them might offer you something they couldn’t offer if they hadn’t known you when  …  and perhaps seen it just the same or totally differently or forgotten all about it and remembered something else.  Memory is as variable as the weather. 

And there is an edge to meeting old friends with whom you have not kept in regular contact.  Time passes, things happen, you may change, they may change .   And the hymn to keeping it all the same is unreliable.

The fact that “old wood to burn” comes next suggests to me that sometimes you can’t go back.  Whatever it is, it’s done and change cannot be ignored.  It has happened.  You may make one sentimental meeting but you feel you can’t make, indeed, don’t want another.  

And if I think of burning old stuff, I think of Pam the Painter, a world class exponent of “let’s just keep it in case” who went through files, her wardrobes, the kitchen shed at intervals this year and reported cheerfully how much better she felt  because she knew what she had and  -= most importantly – why she had kept it.   It was no longer “I can’t throw it away”, it was “do I need to keep it ?”

That business about “throwing everything out, clean sweep”

has mostly made me shy away.  You can’t.  You keep things for a variety of reasons including what I taught myself to ask “Am I ready to get rid of this? “   It took years to shed unsuccessful writing projects, no use to man or beast, nobody is going to give me a series at  80.    But the very pages resisted… till they didn’t.

I am the greatest exponent of keeping what you keep ie no logic in that except for you but what I have kept is reduced.  I do believe in getting rid and moving on.   I don’t want to leave a stuffed house that my executors have to rake through and will only dump when I am gone.  Burn the old wood, as you can.  That’s what it’s for, to give you space or light, to keep you warm.

Which leaves me with old wine to drink.  I think I would prefer nice wine to drink, cheaper, more accessible and a matter of personal taste – like everything else in this world. Here’s to you.   Or raise a glass to the past, and those no longer with you.  

I wrote last week “it’s not about presents.”   So what is it about ?    Mannie is a devout Christian and his Christmas is shaped by observance of

the Christian calendar.  His choice, dear man, good luck.

Wal’s Christmas is shaped by his not liking it, his partner loving it (for some questionable reasons) and the desire to give other people something they like even when he really doesn’t care for it.

My Christmas is  quiet – a quiet full of sounds I might miss in day to day: it’s about unscented candles, small pleasures and passionate gratitude – this year heightened by knowing how ill/or troubled other people are.  

The driver who came to collect me  for Moorfields ( OK so far) had a voice and a grin and came from the Ivory Coast

25 years ago.  I exclaimed without thinking “Cote d’Ivoire !” and he was so excited that I might speak even some French that he talked in both languages, all the way to the hospital.   It was wonderful, he spoke in French till I said something in English and then we went back to English, before he went into French again. The implied compliment of this is heady.

In the hospital, I saw a tall pretty woman with a walking stick decorated with flowers. 

  And when we saw each other again in the second waiting room – it’s staged into three – I told her, my friend had  a stick like that, she called |Maude.  “Why Maude ?” she asked.  So I explained it was really “merde” but she didn’t want to upset anybody, hence Maude, and I talked a little about her.  And she burst into tears.  I got up immediately and went to hold her hands .   She said  turning her head from me” I’m sorry, it’s just that people expect you to be well.  That’s what they want to hear and I know there is something wrong with my feet and my legs and it’s painful.  But they just want me to be all right.” 

So I said that my dear friend facing cerebral lupus told me that she spent a lot of time making other people feel better about her illness.  And I held her hands (I had noticed her feet and legs) and I made her promise to find somebody  to talk to about her pain – an old friend, the local vicar, her doctor – but not to just leave it, never mind what anybody else said.   I was called to the next bit and she promised.

On the strength of persuading  another to do it now, I took a deep breath and asked  my favourite shop assistant in Waterstones (we have had various private conversations) if she would like to come for tea or coffee

and she was delighted.   Then I got cold feet 24 hours later and went in to say “You didn’t think I was bothering you ?  That’s not what I meant …”  And she beamed and said “I’ll be in touch after New Year. Roll on 2025.”

Talking to Sim in Waitrose about books, a voice at my elbow asked about something I had said  which is how I met Mo – neither of these are real names.   Mo used to be a copywriter, she’s seriously interested in books, we took up floor space for some 15/20 minutes, I wrote things down and she asked questions.  We met twice  more round the fitments, till we were laughing.  “I am not pursuing you !” I protested.  “Nor me  !” she said laughing.  “I hope I haven’t bothered you…”

Her husband died  eight weeks ago.  I kissed her cheek and gave her my email.  She wrote yesterday.  Another date for  the New Year.

While yesterday, trying to get out of the West End of London, brought to standstill by demonstration,  I met a Neapolitan born psychotherapist, working at the University of Norwich

this is the cathedral

and we sat on a wall, she for whatever reason, me to rest the aged knees – and talked.  She told me she didn’t live in London but  comes up and would  be in touch.

So my Christmas  run up is so far  about going to the Selvedge Christmas Fair, a thing of wonder and colour (one of my  “observances”) and finding another door to open to communication.  And another.   And another.   

Long ago  one of the chants was “Not the Church and not the State/women will decide our fate” and we marched, sang and signed until a woman’s right to abortion was  legal.   I’d do it again.  Women’s reproductive rights is something I care passionately about.

So apparently did Michelle Obama which is why it was her theme when she appeared for the now defeated  Harris in  Wisconsin, a swing state the Democrats needed to carry to have a fighting chance.

  And  she and her party got it wrong. 

You will by now have heard all this but I am revisiting it  because that was the state.   A handsome and intelligent woman, Michelle Obama wore too much jewellery, a deeply unbecoming  hairdo and black.  Black has limited application in campaigning politics.  Even the most tasteful bling says  “We’re different” and even allowing for  how people love celebrity, she missed.  

We see

the image before we hear a word.  Human beings respond faster than you can imagine to non verbal information.  And when the speaker  said her piece, I thought she’d stop.  But  no.   She went on and on, whether  because it was on the monitor or  because she thought she’d bridge the gap by  sheer volume of words, I can’t imagine.  To watch was hard.

I’ve done a lot of public speaking.  You try to  guess your presenting image into the right place  but then, you “read the room.”  Humans do that – not the monitor.   And if you have to turn the spoken vehicle from what you thought you came to say  to something  else,  that is part of the skill.   Because in that crucial address there was no inclusion, no offer, nothing to make you feel if you had been there, that she came to speak to you.

So who cares ?

While nearer home  The Archbishop of Canterbury

resigned over the concealed abuse of children under the auspices of the Church of England, the presiding national religious body by a man, over 40  years, now dead. Some may say that the damage is done, though the beatings and sexual abuse live on in the bodies and minds of his victims who have campaigned for years to have the Church acknowledge its complicity and the cover up. 

40 years ago at least, a nurse whom I will call Kay came to see me with alopecia.  And that’s what she wanted to talk about  although her dysfunctional relationship with her parents soon became apparent.  I was just about to marry my second husband, the flat we had taken on was being decorated and that’s where  we suggested she stayed, so that she had time to get her breath back.  Which was fine until the silhouette of a man coming down the fire escape at the back fell across her , woke her from sleep

and she rang in terror.  My  husband (very nearly) told me to keep her on the phone while he drove up there and in due course they returned.  He told me  how the shadow had reminded her of her father who had abused her from the age of four.

It took time but Kay made it.   Being in touch diminished, you can’t live people’s lives for them – until she rang to tell us that her father  was applying to a theological college.  My husband rang, he was her first witness and he was ex Met.   My  police clearance was high but I was too well known at the time.  We were told among other things “We must forgive him.”

If the Church retains the right to  administer its own difficulties, then it must accept and understand that the only thing that would have stopped this hateful assailant  was a decision.   Decision though carries the impact of judgement. 

Oh  “judge not, lest ye be judged.”    

So the State uses too many words (going on and on and on is an illness on both sides of the Atlantic).  And the Church prays rather than  take a position even when children are abused.   Which leaves me asking – who cares ?  And before we decline into anarchy, the only constructive answer is  the individual.   I hope.

Hope by Jo Wade

it was a cold dark November day when I came home from school, about 10 or 12,

and asked my mother  what sort of a day she had had .  “Awful, thank you” she said.  “I spent all day waiting in for the gasman.”    On-line doesn’t very often do it for me.  I recently filled out all kinds of stuff  for Malwarebytes and was asked to prove who I am in yet another piece of kit which verifies (gevalt)  that I am indeed  who I say I am.

However last week the cats came back.  Not really In multiple, it only take one to do damage, and he frightened the robin to death.  I quite like cats, and I know it is the nature of the beast but it is your beast and  that’s why I don’t have one. 

And I don’t want them – and have had them – messing in the garden.  I have opted for plants and birds, the latter in short supply.

So  I found organic  cat repellant and I ordered it.   So far, so good.   Then I found an offer for something I really wanted. and did that too.  At that point I needed a rare second cup of coffee.  and then I found beeswax candles.

This may be very routine to you but it isn’t routine to me.   However I know you can go from here to Hai Phong looking for what you want – and not find it.  And here was what I wanted. 

I came home from lunch yesterday – having done three errands as well as eaten, not a moment too soon, procrastination truly being the thief of time  – to a discreetly screened package in the garden.   It was Silent Roar, scented with the urine of lions.  I just hope it works and gives felon felines  the sort of headache that stops them short and repels all boarders.

Of course what I would really  like is the lion to materialize as the cat gets into the garden, roar and shrink back magically into the pellet – but you can’t have everything,   Even on line.  So  I wrote to  the supplier Fitfit and said it arrived, in a sensible place, thank you –  which a human acknowledged with the words  “You’re welcome.” 

The  second offer is en route, emails, texts and all,  and I am currently experiencing  the 2024 version of my mother’s extended wait because not every delivery crew rings the bells, uses the knocker or speaks to the neighbours to see if they will take in the delivery.  All too many of them are thinking about the next stop before they dump the item on the front step, and the rate of casual theft round here  is rising.

So I have taken a view: I  will wait.

  I learned to wait, a long time ago and this is waiting in a good cause. I managed to delay the ironing yet again  ( I hate ironing)  but went through a drawer or two, read the articles I had  set aside from the paper  – and took delivery from the smallest agreeable Filipino of an offer on  firelighters, the first time I have ever used ebay.   Sensibly packed and marketing heaven – with a small box of matches in the bottom, how classy! 

Can I be this lucky tree times in a row? 

We shall see.  However then the computer had migraine and I used another long wait – till I was told how to temporarily fix it –  to do the aforementioned  ironing (grrrhh), and all sorts of other domestic trivia like relining drawers and reorganizing storage.  

This has resulted in a weekend quite a different shape from my usual one.  When I belted down to the supermarket much later than I usually go, the  Chinese lady who works on the sushi  bar (I hate sushi but we always speak/laugh/wave – these are people not automata) looked up taken aback:”But you usually come in in the morning !”   So I wagged my finger warningly and we both grinned.

I have breathed and prayed and been, and life has flowed round me as if I were a small rock and that sense of solidarity has been oddly comforting.  Human beings are creatures of habit, me too, and it is never bad to change the habit.   I think it’s called a learning curve.

For some reason – unexplained or even referenced

by omnipotent London Transport, the news media or word of mouth – the buses I use were up the creek yesterday. An agreeable teenager at the bus stop confirmed he could find nothing on his ‘phone, checked with the drivers of two other buses coming through better late than never, amid buses out of service, drawing blank. So I came home. not buying the card I thought I must get, or the bits and pieces at the supermarket … I made do and devoted the day to staying off the unresolved swollen ankle and allowing the bruised fingers further R&R.

Surprise, surprise, nothing on tv. Couldn’t think how to hold the book without using SP (sore paw), didn’t really want to read. Thought through tasks to be done as in “I could …” or “what about ?” and rejected them as compromising my stated goals.

The secret Puritan all would be malingerers expect to turn up at the door asking “And what do you think you’re doing ?” didn’t materialize and this time, I could account for myself. I was resting which is sometimes what you have to do.

What I did not expect was how busy my head would be. Oh yes, I sat and thought and dozed – and then as if released by a Pandora, other trains of thought started, some of this of course midwifed by media.

Please stop telling me this person or that person is for Trump or Harris.

We don’t have a vote in the US and the ballot won’t be decided (please God) by Elon Musk or VPutin or the Chinese operatives whose presence is probably more worrying but harder to turn into headlines. It will be decided by the American people , stuck in an electoral system open to abuse and less and less likely to turn up the best person for the job (not a new perception) – because they can’t raise the money to campaign. It will be as it is.

Then I thought about the Darlington Nursing Union, a group of nurses whose hospital an d whose union have toed the party line about a trans identified male colleague being allowed to share their changing room. And well done health secretary Wes Streeting for meeting with them.

I have not shared space with other women to change my clothes very often in my life and because of early exposure to medicine, might be more matter of fact about nudity than some. But changing my clothes at the end of a shift and having to contend with disagreeable commentary because your rights are currently more fashionable than mine ?

No thank you.

I wish I could reach Janice Turner (Times on Saturday) who has written the second of two stand out pieces (the first about Chris Kaba) to acknowledge her twice over for making me think. But though we have the most sophisticated communications systems , it is harder and harder to get through the modern bramble forests – when all you wanted to do was say thank you.

My response to fashion is mostly puzzlement and dismissal. Of 16 Things To Get You To Look Now there wasn’t one I would give house room. I may need clothes but they have to work for me and years ago I opted for style over craze – unless as occasionally happens – the latest thing happens to be just right for you.

The Badget has been praised, castigated, analysed and shrugged into existence. Another it will be as it is. I just wish every member of the current lot to understand that poor communication, the wrong tone and rigidity (received by the watching populace as smug and unthinking) was a major contribution to the unravelling of the Conservative Party as the public (us) received it.

And I know somebody who could really help them – beyond me.

I thought about looking back and looking forward and decided I preferred looking around, looking at where I am, even when it is unknown and might be uncomfortable. I counted my blessings again – and once more, sent every positive thought to friends unwell and friends bothered – and went off to drink another glass of water.