Annalog

It must have come up at school when I was 12 or 14, so that I came home and asked my mother what class

we were.   “Educated” she said over her busy hands “and there aren’t enough of us.”    My parents believed in education – the getting of knowledge and even wisdom rather than passing exams – they thought it was the most important thing and when one of the recent incumbents in charge of education was heard to mouth some inanity,  I muttered aloud to my long dead parents “ I am glad you are not here to hear this” ..and switched off.      

I really do not spend my life looking back but sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward.  I was taught to ask questions.  

Which is how I came to be on the telephone to my GPs surgery, which was busy from opening time onwards.   I was told they don’t do the booster shot and could only refer me over some distance.  Why, when we have an NHS Covid clinic next door but two to them ?  When I asked at that clinic why Pfizer only, the staff on the door were polite but they couldn’t answer.  The knowledgeable pharmacist who has let his premises for the purpose gave me lots of “don’t fuss” but no answers. 

The letter from the NHS is says do have the booster but don’t come forward unless you are frontline medical staff or have a pre existing medical condition.  Call this number ….  The related website says the same thing. 

I take no medicines except my eye drops.  I want to be sensible and I want to co operate

but unless I lie, I can’t see a doctor.  And there is no guarantee that the doctor will know what he or she is talking about.  One of the main reasons for seeing him/her (information and reassurance) is now out of the window.  This is the sharp end of the shortage of GPs and the terrifying over expectation of modern medicine at the cost of “doctoring”.    

As expected, the walk-in clinic which was converted to the site of my first two vaccinations is no more.  If you can roll it out, you can roll it up.  It is a now a GP practice – all that space and light and heat !  Notices demand  “Are you registered to this practice ?  If not, call this number … “ I felt exposed.  I had a decision to make, I was not sure how to make it. 

No wonder people queue for hours at A&E.   You may wait, but you do see a human.

A practical woman friend, to whom I had communicated my anxiety,  tried to reassure me and inadvertently, she offered me the clarity I sought. Her son in law is a cancer specialist, presumably  familiar with the structure of vaccines, and he had said to her and her husband “Just get it.”  Well, each to his own

and you have to trust somebody.     

So back I went to the clinic on the corner to enquire how to go about it, where they had a gap and swept me and my shopping downstairs, to where five of us waited, ushered in and out by Ian (“I’m 83 and at least I feel I am doing something for my country”).  A nurse called Amy took all the usual details and asked questions about allergy, anaphylactic shock, spoke sensibly about the mixture of vaccines, side effects, how it might affect me, “which arm ?” And it was done. 

I came home to feel a couple of degrees under, keep warm, doze and generally behave like an old lady.   Fingers crossed, that will be it – but the questions still remain.   You can see why people don’t like being told “just say yes”.  They want to know what they are saying yes to.   You can sense the confusion between the staff giving out the injections and the staff trying to handle everything else-  there is another world of health needs alongside the Covid world.  I grew up with elderly people saying to each other and us “Keep well.  Don’t get sick.”  And now I am one of them, for similar reasons: I don’t know who to ask or what information is reliable.

Recently the young man 3 doors down put out a small box of books and bits with a sign saying “Free”. I took Isabella Tree’s Wilding (fab). 

Last week I saw a girl putting out some other things, thanked her for the book and asked if they were moving.  “To Australia” she answered with Antipodean twang.   We spoke for a minute or two and I wished them luck.  Later that day I saw a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Not my kind of a thing at all, but I was curious.   And I was reminded of a friend’s recent comment about a current success “the story isn’t much but the evocation of character is terrific.” You can’t knock a book that sold 12 million copies, shrewdly touching all kinds of bases – though for me the most apposite is the outsider as heroine, who functions but doesn’t fit and will always be lonely.*

Because lonely can be disabling. 

You never kind of learn how to mix or speak or even wear the clothes that would get you to first base.  You may withdraw still more and manage alone because you can’t see how to do it any other way, or develop a false persona like a mask (defensive and protective)  to enable yourself to function without explanation.  It must help if, like Lisbeth Salander, you are really good at something. 

But lonely hits you from time to time and you have to find your way through, aided by comfort food and wonky telly, long walks and bouts of maniacal housework. You can’t escape it.  It is part of you, I used to say, like a birthmark.  It’s there.  Evasion is harder work than recognition and the development of coping strategies. 

Occasionally, wonderfully, you meet other ghost ships

like you and you pass, flags waving, in the world.   It seems a very long time ago that I moved across the Thames from north to south where first I met a woman, 20/25 years younger than me.  I don’t know her diagnosis though I admired her forever when I once asked – a propos some comment she had made – how disturbed she was and she answered clearly – frequently unbalanced, occasionally psychotic and had to be hospitalised.

She went through several years of profound religious observance which gave her a focus though little more stability.  And then about a year ago – these encounters are completely random – we met and I saw something changed in her face.   She told me with excitement she had a new psychiatrist who really listened to her, that some of her pills had been changed

and she felt so much better.  She looked it.  I said so.  She beamed.

There is an odd mixture of childishness and maturity alongside her innate personality, at least with me, and when we met last week, she was wearing a pale green

which particularly became her.  When I remarked on it, she told me she had got down from an 18 to a 16 (“I got so fat, I got so fat but next time I shall get down to a 14 and then in spite of all the lovely nibbles and things at Christmas,  I shall get down…”  )  She had a vision of herself I had never heard before and it was the longest speech she had ever addressed to me, standing, holding my hand.  And embarrassed, she wound up with Happy Christmas and I stopped her – “You can’t say Happy Christmas.  It’s only October – we’re going to see each other before then… “

“We are ?” she said.  “Look at your lovely smiling face …”

I said “You know fine if that’s what you give, that’s what you get …”  She shook her head.  “That’s not always true “ she said (and I bet she knows it isn’t true.)

“No” I admitted.  “But it makes a great place to be coming from …” 

“You’re always so kind to me …”

“Do you remember” I said ”when I was so unhappy and  you stopped and taught me a prayer, and prayed with me in the street – you made me say it again to be sure I would remember it ?”   She nodded and put her hand against my face.

We have done well with each other.

On the front of the scaled down version of the Independent in print (called the i ) is a slogan: “journalism you can trust”.    I wrote to the editor, to whom I had a personal introduction, once by snail mail, twice over the internet, about something directly to do with the commercial content of his paper

and never heard a word.  Had I ever been naïve enough to trust that slogan, his lack of response  – or that of anybody representing him or his  journal – it would have ended there.  One lost in transit – yes: two oversights – maybe:  three – not a chance.

When a young woman representing the company with whom I had tried to get in touch over a four month saga spoke to me, I had to ask her to speak more slowly.   I don’t know what language she was speaking but it wasn’t anything to do with communication…  “in the box” perhaps ? 

  In this case the box had a lid, 42 layers of packing and a message to communicate one way.

I turned into my mother, very correct, very clear, shades of Boudicca ie “you can kill me but you won’t win.” Within five minutes we had established that (yes) they were behind on what they offered though still offering it, (no) there was no acknowledgement or explanation. Which (yes) probably was worrying and even (gosh) unsatisfactory – but this was the offer – spend to get – which I declined, deloping

rather than shooting the messenger.  Who wants to do business with such a bunch ?

This weekend I met a woman I’ll call Mrs. A , already in conversation with an acquaintance of mine whom I will call Ms. C.  (Mrs. A had wedding rings on, Ms. C doesn’t)    Mrs A had a bad facial bruise and a dressing over an injury above her eye – probably a fall.  She had spent four hours in A&E, waiting, she said, to have the dressing removed and the injury, I presume, checked.   I wanted very badly to ask (at the risk of seeming impolite) if she had not quietly asked for the simple help she needed.  But I know those places.  You sit and wait your turn and the less urgent your need, the longer you wait.

  And over the hours, they deal with everything.  Until it’s your turn.  She had bottled her irritation till she exploded, lost her temper and stormed out.  I suggested she went home, soaked a clean washcloth under warm water and worked the dressing gently off herself.  She said it had never occurred to her.  

Long ago before we knew the extent of his oppression, Mao Zedong brought into being an initiative of so-called “barefoot” doctors – people of any medical background (including veterinary) which could be built on with up to two years of extra medical knowledge to a standard, and sent them out in rural China with transport and a kit, to meet limited expectations.

  I always thought it was infinitely preferable to the dependence and over expectation inherent in the western model.

I have mentioned before that, hate the mask though I do, it has its advantages: I can mutter behind it.   And I am of the age to enjoy a mutter.  My father had colourful expressions which, when I use them, call him to mind. One or two are savage, World War 1, and I shrink from them.  For some reason – I have never understood why – if he really disapproved of a man, he referred to him as a “cowson” – the ultimate insult, I only heard it a limited number of times in my life.  (My father died when I was 24, it was his birthday this week) 

More commonly,  to emphasise desperation or importance, he punctuated his sentences with the epithet “God’s Teeth”.   I am very fond of GT, it gets an airing behind the mask.  There is something remarkably savage about invoking the Almighty’s teeth – and I did it the other day when called upon to share a bus with a man who stank. 

I was in a hurry otherwise I would have got off so I sat as far away from the pong as possible and muttered at intervals to myself.  I didn’t miss him when he got off, the miasma said spoke louder than words.

Picture

a whitehaired respectably dressed woman hooting with laughter over her newspaper.  The Times headline “PM rebukes police over treatment of women,” pots and kettles, anyone ?  Of course two wrongs don’t make a right but …  Subsequent print features a long serious article on Priti Patel, she of the ill fitting shoes.  Apart from sneakers (laces attach them) everything flat or heeled falls off the back of her foot. Is she webbed or some extraordinary size like 3 and four fifths ?   Can’t a minion organise the admitted expense of a special last which means that everything subsequently fits ?  It is hard to credit her power when she looks as if most of her attention must be focussed on avoiding a over t.

Tim (not his name) lives in the country and sends me messages about the weather and the light, the birds he feeds, the glimpse of a kingfisher

-and every so often, he hauls off and has a rant. About rabid religiosity (he is a regular communicant), the manufactured petrol crisis or the Chinese manufactured security light – three days of effort, two further pieces of equipment and the patience of Job.     

I thought I was up for a rant this morning, exhausted by every new tv series featuring missing children, violence, dark secrets and something nasty in the woodshed. If you want to make a start against misogyny, television drama would be a good place to begin.

I don’t need hearts and flowers and Busby Berkeley but the misery ratio has been high for two years and I’d like a break.  There is a new David Attenborough film but he loves crawlies and I bet the venture is syrruped in supermarket music. 

Many of the doctors wish to continue to work via Zoom but the best I can see that as is as a preliminary and then some of us will have to be seen for real – and I think that’s medicine.  Private medicine in London averages around £113 per fifteen minutes but they will see you, (less than the price of many a hairdo) while in many medical contexts, Zoom is like an upmarket edition of those Victorian dolls on which ladies indicated where it hurt (too indelicate to look at for real) and the doctor wrote a prescription.    

Mary (NHN) a single mum is up the hospital for the fourth time with her 9 year old daughter’s ear infection

– three courses of antibiotics, abreaction so severe to the middle lot of pills, her mother had to take her back in the middle of the night.    When is an ear, nose and throat surgeon to look at the source of the infection ?  I went this route 30 years ago with my own child, it’s terrifying and by the time I got to the surgeon ( the then secretary for the National Deaf Children’s Society told me in no uncertain terms) my son had 30 per cent reduced hearing.

Winter sweaters need replacing (after 20 years) but the quality is questionable, thin and won’t wash.  Sheep would be ashamed of it.  So I kept looking and had a buy for the first time in Uniglo – all wool, becoming colour, nice shape, good price.   It’s not that I don’t want to support British companies, I do – but what I want isn’t there.

 I don’t drive, though Tim sent me a local story of a man shifting mortar in a tanker who was pursued by a trail of vehicles who thought he had petrol.   The queues at the local pumps

added 40 minutes to the bus journey but I am still cheering an Asian driver who refused with gentle resignation – and a twinkle in his eye – to give way to a blowhard in a 4×4. 

A visit to an antique show permitted for the first time in over a year was wonderful – full of interest and light and because it was pouring with rain, only those who really wanted to be there made the effort.  I went with a new friend (Italian) who redeemed my creeping disenchantment through her different point of view.

This isn’t a rant is it ?  I’m not really fed up  … oh good.

Sometimes you go to write something  – but before you get there, you read something along the same lines.  And then you have to choose: are my thoughts still of interest or has (s)he (in this case Matthew Syed)

covered it ?  I like Syed.  He is thoughtful and intelligent and there can’t ever be too much of that.  

Second thought on the subject is that these ideas swim to the top of collective consciousness – by luck, planetary positions, who knows ?  Does it matter ?  He has written about an appreciation of the gift of life which in the person of a well beloved (in his case, his father) is thank you

for life itself.

Alongside blessing counting which I do out of celebration as well as every time I falter, I say thank you.  Usually there is something to say thank you for – say, a night I haven’t awoken with arthritic knee on fire – so often the first thing I say in the morning is thank you.    I know who I thank, and as we used to say, it is not illegal, immoral or fattening.  I have never objected to thank you, still reeling from the silly girl who said  it made her feel obligated. 

Which made me wonder – what makes me feel obligated ?  And the crisp answer is, nothing I can think of and I have thought.

In my world, kindnesses are freely exchanged.  If there is a misunderstanding, it is discussed, resolved and dismissed.  If we can’t discuss it, then we’re never going far in the friendship stakes.  Which is part of why I blench from “Oh, you must have lots of friends …”  No I don’t but the ones I call friends are wonderful.  There are of course imponderables – things you have to set aside because otherwise the friendship cannot endure.  But that’s a judgement call.  Still a judgement call even if you do “nothing”  …

I am sure that the willingness to acknowledge and say thank you says something about class, personality and upbringing.

  Oh how wonderful to be that much older and not care !   I say thank you because I like to and because so often it brings pleasure.  It is such a small thing and it betokens a much bigger one – acknowledgement.

In the online NextDraft (mostly but not exclusively US news items) there is a story about how people struggle to deliver anything from a book to a freezer tray, remaining largely unacknowledged and barred from using the lavatory at the property.   (Shades of the film The Help).  Perhaps this is the place to indicate

that there is an old unrepealed law in the UK saying that you may knock on the door of any dwelling in the land and ask to use the privy: it may not be denied.  Of course this ruling is open to abuse, thievery and knavery but very few knaves and thieves are thoughtful enough to ask to relieve themselves – even if they call it “the toilet” (how I hate that word, reminds me of a hole in the ground). 

There are of course big thank you’s – not making it to the plane that goes down, getting through exams, being cleared at least for the time being of some big medical problem, or me the night my son was born.  Lord, I was grateful -and I still am.  Though that makes me remember another gratitude.

I co wrote a successful little tv sit com.  My writing partner went home to the US.  The TV company assigned two other writers who of course wanted the job but not me.  The writing of the second series was diminished, I was married and pregnant with a much wanted child and the men I had to work with behaved badly.  Towards the end of the writing – I had stuck it out – I got up, said goodbye and left.   I didn’t scream or shout, I was polite – but I cried till I was sick and then I rang my mother, dreading her response.  “Oh darling” she said (never shall I forget it) “I’m so proud of you .”   What ?  “You have had nothing but trouble with this experience” she said “and all those miscarriages…  I was afraid you’d go on and lose the baby …”

Thank you.

Way back at the beginning of the pandemic, one of those Chelsea matrons who inspire me to bomb making remarked “I suppose people will be nicer to each other now …”  and I retorted that I had never needed an epidemic to be polite.  

But although I see some writing on long Covid, I don’t see very much about how Covid has impacted us individually, though the idea of mass illness brought about changes in behaviour and not all of them negative.

So here is my positive and negative as I assess it, in the presence of a nasty disease, of which in the early days my son, knowing of my scarred lungs, remarked, “You mustn’t get this.”

  I replied “And if I do, make me comfortable, keep me at home and let me go.”   And then did all the sensible things I could – exercise, travel and shopping melded into one, not going out every day, always wearing a mask (the bug is airborne), hand washing again and again and again (I have always been pretty hot on handwashing).  I shall refrain from saying common sense because it is increasingly rare and unjustly discredited for sounding old fashioned – but you know what I mean. I did not wash fruit in Fairy Liquid and boiling water. 

A big positive was that, trapped indoors, I finally addressed two out of three of the compilations of  books and papers

I have amassed.  Five bags of shredded material (p), four loads of books to Oxfam which has a thoughtful book section in the High Street Kensington branch (p).    

I turned out drawers – not all the drawers, but I made what is called “significant inroads”.    I went through things and let them go to a happier hunting ground, guilt lessened, (p).  

Several of us agreed that we had good days and bad days. We always had had, but these were highlighted by the relentlessness of news media.  In Covid the broadcasters got “rolling news”

personified – nothing to look for, you could do whole programmes on updates, conflicting debate, how much worse it was in India or South America, and the old saw about “lies, damn lies and statistics” (n).  

It wasn’t just what was said, it was how it was said which means that one of the more reliable speakers is a distinguished statistician who spoke with the wish to communicate within his field of expertise (p).   He was rare.  As soon as one person made one point, somebody else knocked it over to make another. So what we the watchers learned is nobody knew.

  I am sure this was terrifying for some but in any form of public life, you either accept the model that while there are fools, there aren’t any too many of them (p) or you talk to us all as if we were in some kind of adult nursery (n).   And the latter is made worse by frequent recanting and contradiction.  Few of the political contributors speak well (n).

Time stopped and stretched simultaneously.  I reread a couple of the books I pulled down from the shelves.   Sometimes the days seemed stopped, one merging into another.   Pam the Painter and I had hysterics about whether it was Tuesday or Thursday.  But the months flew – more than halfway through September all ready ?  

For some time is the enemy, for others the friend.  I found those waterlogged afternoons definitely negative but they may have worked for other people.   I missed doing things on a whim, having to book, to reserve a space and time (and Pam was furious that when she did, she still had to queue and wait- which was to do I suppose with the numbers of people permitted and how slowly or otherwise they progressed through.) 

But I turned into a mental miniaturist.  Every small good thing

was a plus, every smile, every quip.  Every day I could say I was well. An email from a long ago listener who wrote to me as a friend – this is my year round Christmas present, I never get tired of these (p).

And on the way home, through a shower, as I rounded the path’s curve, there was a clean space on the road, rain rendering it glassy, on which ten leaves (I counted) had fallen or been blown,  arranged, placed  by an invisible hand

Pause for breath …

Not plane, or train, or bus, or car

A book to take me far away

The centenary reissue of

The Eagle of the Ninth

By Rosemary Sutcliffe

Back on  the 21/22 September

Until then – take care and be well.

Just before a young man hit me in the face I glimpsed a tall man with a golden Labrador

 seeing eye dog.  I always leave those dogs alone.  They are working.  I went round a group of three solid people to the lift and the son, the tallest, made a gesture with his right arm outflung which hit me square in the chops and I went down.  And began to laugh.  I who am self conscious in public, knocked to the ground.  They rushed to pick me up, the young man apologising.  I had seen his father going into the hospital with that close grained warm skin and asked as we all shook ourselves out, where was he from  ?   “Cyprus” he said, eyes twinkling, as he clucked at the boy.  “He didn’t do it deliberately” I said.  “I’m not so sure” his father said darkly and we laughed and parted.  

Three and a half hours plus waiting in the hospital this time because, I was told, “every doctor was ill, on holiday or on a course”.   Chinese trainee surgeon, Ethiopian nurse: the injection was A1 and they were both exhausted. 

Then the pressure in your eye is checked (see Music and the Tiger) before being allowed home.  Which for me means a black taxi.

In the meantime I had been approached by a man who recognised my voice and had listened to me when he was “away” (in prison).  After ten minutes of catch up I asked how things were now.  “Oh” he said “got over all that. Young and silly.  You having the injections ?   l’ve had 26…”  Good for you.  And I lost him in the clinic – nearly 50 people all to be seen several ways round and ministered to.

The last of two at the end of the clinic,  I was spoken at (rather than to) by an old man who has had 134 injections and believes in the NHS as Holy Writ “but you can help yourself  with eating properly, I don’t want to be dependent on anybody so I take care of myself” – well quite right too but all in that slightly hectoring tone  which takes no more notice of your reply than if you swatted a fly – on a roll, as we say.

The lift brought me to street level

and as I came up the corridor, towards me came the man with the golden Labrador.  The dog smiled and wagged his tail.  I smiled.  The dog pushed his head towards me.  “I wasn’t going to speak to you” I whispered.  “You’re working and I don’t want to make the boss cross.”  Appreciative wriggle and more wagging, licking of nearby fingers and the man began to laugh.  “He’s such a flirt” he said.  “He decides who he wants to speak to…” I was just glad it was me.

The taxi driver was a very good looking man who made it clear that a fare who talked made a change, said various nice things, we exchanged notes on the world until, less than half the way home, I asked if he was married and it was just like lancing a boil.  He had had two long relationships, had a son of 21 from the first, and two boys 13 and 9 from the second and both their mothers let him down badly. 

The second let the younger boys down too – kept them out of school. Falsified home schooling, stopped them seeing him.  And I itched to ask for the names and addresses of the women concerned because there is always another side to the story.  I couldn’t figure it out and he was pouring words, as I say, like infection from a wound.  

When we drew up opposite, I paid him and he kissed my hand. He looked at me and I looked at him.  “The years look good on you” I said “even if they’ve been tough.”   And I got out, went round and indicated he should open the window.  Whereupon I reached in, kissed his cheek and said “Listen to me.  You’re 49 and I am 77.  I’ve got thirty years on you.  Things will be better but they will only get better if you let them.  Carry that stuff around with you, it will poison you.   The boys will eventually decide for themselves and you must make it easy for them.  Go forward, not back. “ And walked away.

Time moves all the time. 

As I say “now”, you read it later.   My father used to drive me mad saying “Don’t leave at 1.00 if you have to be there at 1.00.  You have to get there, it takes time …”  He was right in this (as in so much else) and as I was thinking about this week’s copy, I read a line from the widow of a man killed in the Twin Towers – “I have moved forward, I haven’t moved on … “  Time in the months of pandemic has been both  killingly slow and gone in a whistle.  September ?  How’d that happen ?  

Usually (suitably grateful to the Powers That Be) I sit down and write. 

I have the greatest respect for the subconscious mind which is obviously where a lot of my work is done and yes, of course, down the years I have learned to add bits in or cut back, change the order etc.  An old boss (newspaper editor) used to say bracingly “There is a piece in there, if we could just get past the introduction … !”  I learned.

But this week I have faltered.  

I have a whole piece sitting beside me and I am not sure.  Generally speaking journalists write in a framework – as politico, a reporter from a particular destination, star turn and so on.  Nobody tells me what to do and most of the time I think it has made me a better writer, sometimes better than others and sometimes I miss the boat.  This time I had a dilemma.

For all those years in radio I very rarely dealt with the news.  Everybody else did news. I did issues.   I have Linda Marks to thank for this.  And I still do issues.  There are the headlines, written or spoken, and there is life.  I stick to life.  It has seemed to me impossible, indeed an affectation, to ignore the pandemic which has affected so many people.   But in my life I do look for the silver lining,

for the small joy, for the bit that’s funny or touching or lifts the heart, because I don’t know how else to manage. I never falsify these things, to myself or anybody else, but I watch and seize on them with joy. 

I do not think that much of the coverage of the pandemic has been helpful.  It has been depressing and contradictory, confusing and relentless.  And a lot of this is to do with the presenters,  political or journalistic, and how the stuff been offered to us. But the counterbalance has been hard to find, until it comes along.

There are all sorts of ways to look at the exit from Afghanistan. I don’t feel you can ignore it.  The knock on is already beginning to be felt. America has been lied to by its elite for years.  Again. 30 years in South East Asia, 20 years in Afghanistan.  In the UK we followed 200 years of misdirected foreign policy – good enough for them, good enough for us.

Neither were true.

For us, at home, it is just one more thing alongside melting ice caps, fires burning out of control in all five continents, plastic blocking the rivers, waste in the sea, this ripped down and that thrown up, and something else, lying broken … You think of what you can bear to face, we all do.  But you’d have to be wilfully stupid to pretend that all is well.

While if you’re writing, you have to be careful that in trying to offset all the bad news with some small bit of something nicer, you don’t jar somebody’s sensibilities, over-egg the pudding, diminish either side of the story in trying to offset the one and the other.  Or just sound foolish.

“Time” says an old adage “heals all wounds.”   I haven’t believed that since I was about fifteen.   Time changes how we perceived things, because time changes everything all the time.  Some things never change, whether by luck of the draw or act of will.   And some things take their time to change. We call that history.     

Last week I lost a watch.

  I was very fond of it but I can live without it.  I had been to three shops and when the bus broke down coming home, I disembarked and waited for a second, so I thought the chances of finding it were thin.  Nobody answered the centralised telephone number at John Lewis or the White Company.  So I left it 36 hours till I could go in, when the JL assistant was horrified and helpful and the White Company employees did all they could. Brora, the third shop, had already answered the old fashioned telephone and drawn a blank.  Transport for London now offers a sensible enquiry form.

On Wednesday Pam the Painter and I had a happy lunch for the first time in a year, at a Pizza Express where every single employee wasn’t English and was charming, and the food was good.  Pam’s birthday is upcoming (a mere snippet of 60) and like so many people, we have friends who are not well. 

One of her oldest pals has developed a very rare brain condition which will end in his fairly rapid demise.

  Inevitably, there are those who presume to tell you how to mark your friend’s passing.   I wish they’d stick to curtains.  Their advice is not sought and everybody makes up their own minds. Lecturing in such unhappiness just makes the recipient miserable.

On Thursday I discovered that you can’t have what you want, you can only have what they’ve got.  So I tried different shops.  I wound up a couple of tube stops from home, lost my Freedom Pass (dammit) and looked at my second watch.  No watch.   As we used to say at school when things went wrong – “God’s gone off me.” 

By now hot and cross, I sought hackney therapy.

The taxi driver listened to my woes and then told me his – his government allocated number for the payment they got during the pandemic has been hacked.  He has moved, which means that successive assistants cannot match up the details without a lot of tinkering so he gets his money after every kind of negotiation (“no point in losing your temper” he said wrily) but it’s several weeks’ late.       

I came home, put everything in the sink to wash and rang Wal with watch news.  He was taken aback.  The loss of the Freedom Pass is just inconvenient but why was I shedding watches ?  “It’s meant” I said helplessly, so we moved on to what he had cooked

last night and he confessed that – most unlike him, A for organisation – he had run out of turmeric.  He has two neighbours called Jane  – we call them Tidy and Untidy Jane – so he rang Tidy Jane to see if  he could borrow turmeric.  “Of course” she said “but don’t come over.  I’ve caught some sort of bug from one of the grandchildren – nothing to do with Covid – and I am hors de combat with the loo.  I’ll leave it on the step.” 

He expected a pinch in a packet but she left him a jar, which he brought home (next door but two), used and planned to return in the morning.   Only Tidy Bunny couldn’t find the turmeric. He checked the garden table, the cupboards in the kitchen, under things, behind things, had it fallen down, rolled somewhere ?  Eventually he went upstairs to the third floor to get dressed to go shopping and buy some – where he found it, on the fitment in the bathroom.  And he has no memory of how it got there.   “Why the bathroom ?” he exclaimed.  I said I couldn’t possibly comment

and we said goodbye.  

Then I walked from the living room to the bathroom – and there was my watch.  Which I must have taken off when I washed my hands, before I went out for the second time of asking and never put on again, never thought about, till I dropped the Freedom Pass and looked in anguish at it – and it wasn’t there.

We all do this, lose a word or a term and have that “Eureka !” moment turning over at  quarter past four, to mutter “that’s the phrase I wanted,  peristaltic action !”   I felt quite sentimental about good old peristaltic action, it had been gone for three weeks.  Now, that was a prolonged turmeric moment …