Annalog

Fact and fiction are often part and parcel of each other. Never mind who writes what best, badly written fact can read literally unbelievably.  Intelligent imaginative fiction on a factual subject can give you better emotional information.  It was suggested the other day that a good novel on jealousy gave you more insight than a series of factual essays.  I used to recommend certain novels rather than self help because self help was so often badly written.

But I do feel very strongly when something important in our lives is given a fictional treatment before we have had time to find out enough about the facts of the matter from reliable sources.   So Chernobyl – the subject of finely acted fiction on television recently – but the facts are still coming to light.  To this end , there were three books out on it last year and I chose one (by Kate Brown), waited till it came out in paperback and acquired it.   And it is a game changer in perception from the first chapter.

So the idea of fake news doesn’t make me smile.   We didn’t need technology to invent that.   A card carrying cynic, I like to think I can often smell a wrong ‘un but in fact I am sure I am duped as much as anybody else, as a citizen or a voter, a patient or a consumer. And fact is often stranger and more provoking than fiction.

Yesterday in my supermarket of choice, two women came to blows over toilet tissue, a number of other people were much less than agreeable and some oaf shouted at my nothing if not polite Filipina cashier because she had been instructed not to let people have more than  so many toilet rolls and only two packs of Paracetamol.   And he didn’t like it.   Panic, we agreed, is more catching than corona virus.

When I arrived at my next port of call,  the long established family butcher round the corner, we were graced with a full complement of staff – the Staffie (short, muscular, twinkle in his eye, don’t cross him), the Scot, the Owner and Mr. Nice Guy who is often sent forward as advance guard plus Rosie (I’ve named her) who needs only a mob cap and a dress with panniers to look like an 18^th century milkmaid.  They could charge extra for teasing and fooling plus the meat is good.   NG stopped me in the doorway because he said, they were only allowed to give me a chicken breast and three rashers of bacon, in case of hoarding.   The Staffie said “Oh I dunno, she looks like a sufferer to me !”, the Owner said hello as we all began to talk and I asked if they had heard about the uproar in the supermarket the afternoon before.  Of course they had.  Jungle drums.

“So” said Rosie “ we’ve got a new wheeze now. We’re going to tell everybody that red meat will cure the corona virus –  and make a few bob.  If they want a fight, they can come and fight here …”  I suggested ringing the Daily Mail  and we all thought it was a very good idea to prop up red meat sales “because of course “ I said “you don’t have to eat it.  You just have to put it on the inflammation, like that steak dress of Lady GaGa’s – that was an early case, not admitted at the time … “   By now we had been joined by another customer so I told her we were discussing red meat as a protection against the corona virus.

She was Italian and told us that in Italy which has the highest European infected population, the highest number of deaths, and also the highest number of elderly people with underlying conditions, the butchers are doing great business because everybody thinks they should eat red meat to keep themselves (her word) strong in the face of the virus.

Even I could write the piece convincingly.

Until Matt Hancock put his foot in his mouth and claimed to be liaising with the supermarkets in the provision of essentials ( which was promptly denied by the aforementioned  grocers)  the representation by  public health and scientists in this country had been remarkable for singing off the same hymn sheet to the same tune.  Let us hope for a return to form in public life as well as the supermarket.

I don’t want to write about the resignation of the head of the Civil Service because there is more to this than meets the eye and you have be desperate – especially nowadays – to resign on camera.

I don’t want to write about the Blond and Carrie, their engagement or their baby.  It is quite clear that Johnson hasn’t signed up to any accord, Parisian or otherwise: this is his fifth child we know about.  Ever heard of overpopulation ?

by Soren Thielemann Sorenski

And however smart his partner allegedly is, she thinks she is the one who will last.  I wonder if the titular head of Dominic Cummings will feature as a celebratory gift ?

It is hard to feel anything positive about the incumbent Home Secretary.  The elephant in every room in Whitehall is Windrush and it is a scandal.  She may not have incurred this mess but she could do something to alleviate it.  Of course that would involve goodwill rather than stilettos and power – you pays your money and you makes your choice.

So, unable to influence the world to be more thoughtful let alone kinder or greener, I went about my business,( small woman, small world), starting at Peter Jones, the John Lewis flagship to buy ziplock sweater bags, roughly 44 x35 cms. (I measured).   From the fitment devoted to them I was offered under the bed bags, lavender scented and mothproofed bags, hanger included hanging bags – but not what I wanted.  The courteous assistant murmured about not stocking what doesn’t sell.  I said it reminded me of that “placed” message on a delayed bus : ”This bus has been instructed to wait for four minutes here, to help us regulate the service.”   Sunshine, I am the service.  Offer that thought to Dame Sharon at the next troubled directors’ meeting. The multiples are imitating each other – cutting back on stock and putting in machines instead of people.   How about a different take on the same problem ?

Otherwise it was Christmas in February – I bought a sheepskin hot water bottle cover, a bottle of brandy and 11 yellow roses (three promptly collapsed but the remainder survive on the mantel). As the hottle queen, I know that when the cover goes, it goes.  So I had worn through cheap cashmere (a present) and pretend heavy knit (acrylic, ditto ) and I was ready for something better that should see me out.

I bought the flowers in the supermarket on a whim.  I hardly ever buy flowers in store.  And if roughly a third die on unwrapping, you can see why.

The friend who gave me brandy for Christmas giggled when I told her I thought VSOP stood for Very Seriously Over Priced.  It was delicious but I have low taste and as long as there is a superior tonic, I’ll buy a cheap cognac.  The girl behind me goggled when I bought a bottle.  “Don’t look like that” I said.  “I don’t drink a bottle a night, just one tot with tonic.”   Strange how nobody thinks anything of buying a bottle of wine (though Wal did manage to bring his local M&S to a standstill buy dropping one of two into the automatic tills – he swears it was accidental, I am unconvinced) but buy a bottle of spirit and people start muttering about five steps and detoxification.  And no, not hydrangea tea.

Long ago, when people still made movies, there were one or two very good very long films but however much I admire The Green Mile or Bridge of Spies in the bits that I have seen of them, three hours is TOO LONG.  Even with brandy and tonic.   In the days of the studios, If you couldn’t tell the story in about 100 minutes (give or take)  the director was judged incompetent .   And I received a foaming email from Brendan, usually the kindest of men, just released (appropriate word) from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (a mere 122 minutes).  The abandonment of the hour and forty five minutes for two hour slot is killerdiller to all too many television scripts.   It means three too many twists and a discontented viewer.   Extraordinary how as the world spins faster, art slows down. A bit like life with the coronavirus.

I opened the computer this morning and there was an email from a woman I have known for 25 years

“silver for 25 years, circles for ever”

– I know it’s 25 years because it was the 25^th anniversary on 14 February of the launch of a national talk radio station, now fallen into filling air rather than broadcasting. I won’t start, I shall only moan. She lives in the US having married an American musician and they have four children. In crisis, I told her to find a therapist and she took me at my word. Bless her, I don’t even have to close my eyes to see the line of her beautiful cheekbones.

But mainly I am glad (selfish to the end ) because it changed the shape of the day.

“by Louise Bourgeois”

When you live alone you are caught in a permanent balancing act ie liking to do something, for example, the crossword over coffee, becomes having to, and a habit very quickly. There are few habits that don’t exist to be broken. And it is harder to do when you are alone, because habits give the day a kind of scaffolding you can work around.

Every so often something happens that changes the day. I have just declared war on the shape my Sunday has fallen into, for the very good reason that it isn’t doing me any good. The crowded streets stopped me going out on Sundays other than round the block for air and in the longer term, that all too soon become a long slow dead decrescendo of an interminable afternoon.   So I have a plan and Candice(not her real name) has helped me.

I don’t feel compelled to change walking up the road to the Tamils to buy newspapers because moving my back around after sleeping is necessary. And of course I sit to breakfast. But then compiling the list of the books to be sold after my death, rewriting my wishes for my son on my will, annalog copy and the mysterious project (no I won’t talk about it) all demand sitting at the screen. I don’t know how you people do it. Any long period at the screen adversely affects my eyes, my head, my back and my temper.

Scarlett O’Hara “I’ll think about that tomorrow!”

And I use that as an excuse to myself just as we always have done, back in history when we had to argue with the typewriter. (Did you notice this year that there was much less talk about New Year’s resolutions ? I am sure this is because most of them involve us in things we’d rather put off.)

One thing that is going to change the shape of the day is a nap in the afternoon so I can watch a later film on tv because everything that interests me is on at one or two in the morning. And again we are back to the balancing act. It does not follow that staying up late will make me sleep later. I wish. It does mean (poor old thing) that after a couple of outings to see films that attract me in the small hours I will disappointed in the productions, grey of face and out of sorts.

The shape of the day has to include exercise and I have never been any good at doing it for the sake of doing it.   I have friends who use the gym and make it work for them even though they aren’t keen on the environment.   I can’t get past the smell and the bad music. (I am shapeshifting into a bloodhound: the odour of a wellknown lingerie emporium hit me the other day like an advertisement for disinfectant).   And I like to have a goal which is probably why I shop virtually every day, just for supper or plant food or candles – and then I walk because walking has not only alleviated the pain in my once tricky back but continuing to walk keeps pain at bay.  I do do housework but I confess, only intermittently. I have reduced washing by machine to twice a week and once by hand. I read a couple of periodicals and the papers, books, books, books … and I notice rejoicing that the yellow rose called A Friend Indeed has a bud.

Shirley and I were talking about the state of the nation on the till in Waitrose, and I remarked that there is little discussion about the burgeoning level of personal debt. A man two back from me in the queue (American accent, good coat) said clearly “Well said ! We have the same problem. Look at the front page of the FT today – it’s a once in a lifetime piece.” So I bought the FT (£2.90 ) and there was an outstanding op ed item by the news editor on the price of good government.

Today’s headlines are about restructuring the BBC to fewer tv and radio stations, and most importantly among other things, investing more in the World Service. The problem is who will handle this restructuring because it is all too easy to chop things down – realignment requires rather more imagination.

“Kintsugi – the art of putting things back together”

A senior source is quoted as saying “The PM is quite strident about this.” Strident is one of the few things the Blond does a lot of. And just because he makes noise it doesn’t follow he’s saying anything constructive.

A friend and I had a long conversation recently about anxiety – these are anxious times. There is no coherent political opposition, and the world is full of death and despots, fire, poison and standoff. You take refuge in little things – baby’s first step, the hyacinth that has come through in the unseasonable warmth. So, there I was, putting on the kettle in the kitchen on Saturday, when I began to laugh aloud. Several people, Den notoriously truthful, had said very nice things to me that day – but the hair, the clothes and so on were all the same. The only difference was I had put on lipstick.

I came late to lipstick. My first was Tangee Natural which meant it looked like a lipstick but didn’t show.   Child of my culture, I loved watching various film stars (or my mother) put on lipstick.   And powder too. They were ceremonial gestures which indicated self love and self importance of an acceptable kind.

Throughout my life I looked longingly at lipsticks, the way other people look at chocolate. Occasionally I fell in love with a name or a colour but it rarely translated successfully on to my mouth. I was very scared of anything too strong, too deeply coloured because by now sporting the very short very dark hair I had for the main part of my professional life, I already had a face like an axe. This is not self deprecation. The history of the axe in human history is inspiring.

“amazons with axes!”

I mean only that my face was unusually strong for a woman (and incidentally it thrilled me to discover that Ladysmith Black Mambazo means Ladysmith Black Axe – “to chop down the opposition” said their late lamented founder Joseph Shabalala).   Red lipstick was too much.   I think it was about this time too that I discovered that the hetairai – upmarket Greek geisha – wore red lipstick to simulate their vulval lips. Oh.

But if you wait, God sends, seeing as He does, everything – and I found a colour I could wear. So I bought it and as I came out of the shop, I waited for a voice somewhere to ask “What do you think you are doing ?” but it didn’t happen. I think I found the fine loose very nearly invisible powder I use at the same time. I felt I might grow up at last, I was in my late sixties. I recall putting on my swoosh of powder and my two coats of lipstick, the first one carefully blotted, and grinning at myself in the bathroom mirror.

In a Francois Nars store, the staff and I chuckled happily over the moody names for eye pencils and blusher, let alone lipsticks but it was there that I found the colours in formulations I could wear.

When most women say they bought a Chanel, they mean a copy, a handbag or possibly an outfit.   I bought a lipstick.   And yesterday, because I have had a strange eye irritation which is probably to do with poor air quality locally and generally, that’s what I was wearing -, a dollop of clear serum and two coats of Inconnu. Worked for me.

I have a friend unmet in Scotland, who has stuck with me from the radio. He lives with his mother who isn’t getting any younger, and there are have been all sorts of problems. Some months ago he wrote to me and I talked about death. I waited for him to be insulted and never speak to me again – he is a gentle unresolved gay – but he took it in remarkably good part.

But death is final. Dying may take a long time. And dying is unsettling.

“photograph by Robert Ullman

You can’t live in the past for long and most of us have a survival device that kicks in and lets us move on before too long. But when you live with the dying you have to live with fade – strength ebbs, tastes change, the body begins to break down, healing is slowed or doesn’t really happen.

He’s the other end of the island, I am operating in the dark and what people can and cannot take on board may give me pause but it no longer surprises me. So he’s going to have to deal with who’s there and there are so many people involved – his brother, the GP, the doctor at hospital, this nurse and that therapist – so it helps if you can chose one person and talk to him or her – knowing that if there is a big decision, you may need a second opinion and who that might be. You may need as much as 30 minutes,

“sculpture by Vladimiras Nikonova”

you’d be wise to ask for that and getting it makes winning the Derby look like a piece of cake.

One of the worst things about the wonderful National Health Service is that in the matter of ongoing problems (your own or somebody else’s), you may see a different person every time and wind up never telling the whole story, reciting bits of it over and over piecemeal, because there isn’t time to tell it all. And there isn’t always a straightforward outcome.

I am very aware of where I fall short in this. I am at best a friendly pair of ears. And I am all in favour of knowing your limitations.

Recently in conversation with a dear friend who is not a fool, I opined about a relationship and Brendan (not his name) looked at me and said “But what about the other side of it ? I mean, you only know one version and you’re responding to that…” But I am not God or a fly on the wall. I don’t try to be all things to all people and I don’t aspire to be an all knowing combination of angel and big wizard. I just try to do my best with what I’ve got, what somebody else gives me and what I pick up in the spaces between the words, the use of language, the omission and heavily underlined inclusions, what I know (because I have been told) about this person or that person. And direct experience comes into it (what happened to me, that I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears) and life experience comes into it – what I was told or read or learned from somebody else. I try not to presume and I accept that absolutes are rare.

I remember a wonderful article by a doctor about the art of medicine. As we increasingly medicalise ourselves, we would do well to recognise that, alongside the science, there is an art, a skilful way of employment and interpretation. And a lot of this is to do with a glass bridge, a mixture of trust, will, talent and good intent. And the glass bridge gets fogged with fatigue.

I once interviewed the Scottish actor Brian Cox in a tiny radio studio and he may not be tall but he is a big man. And here he is all these years later with a full set of shortcomings and wonderful candour, explaining that for years he was not good as a father because his father had died when he was 8 “so I didn’t know how to do it.”

We think we are so darned clever but there is so much we don’t know.

A very young man, imprisoned for terrorist offences, is released. Shortly afterwards, he grabs a machete ( a very big sharp knife) and lashes out wildly harming three people. The police variously rally fast , the wounded are removed to hospital. Sunday in Streatham.

Rolling news coverage of something like this is a nightmare because everybody and anybody is interviewed, who might know or have seen anything, to keep the story going while we find out the few facts.

The following day we report that the wounded have been secured, the assailant is dead and start looking for the next “hook” – the thing to keep us interested. At the moment the story is concentrated on the fact that the assailant was released early, that although he was observed to be militant, this didn’t affect the process – so why wasn’t he kept in for the whole of his allotted sentence ?

Surely we don’t believe that if he had served longer it would necessarily have rehabilitated him to live differently ? When are we going to bite the bullet that, for the most part, prison is a punishment. Rehabilitation is almost incidental, much more to do with the individual than the stretched few who believe in it. And we have other problems with British prisons: they are overflowing, antiquated and the men and women who run them are increasingly under duress and alienated.

Watching a tv news programme recently, I heard somebody saying that whichever prison was under discussion, offered “full back up and counselling support.” You will forgive me if I say that this sounds suspiciously like somebody offering a pair of elastic stockings to the sufferer of chronic variscosity. There is a great difference between offering offload and time out to the effective executor of a good service, and the sticking plaster on an often poisonously unsafe system which is, for the most part, where we are up to.

Even if lots of public money (whatever is left over from HS2, Crossrail, the Northern Powerhouse, the emergence from Europe and so on, telephone number sums bandied left and right) is allotted to building new prisons (there are a few already in process) until some harsh home truths have been faced about what the prison service is, how it functions, how its monies are allotted and what its endgame is – the risk is throwing good money after bad.

Because whether it is a new building or an old building, overcrowding is overcrowding. It makes every facet of prison life harder to manage. And harder to endure. And as it is relatively new and not widely accepted that the stresses and strains of being a policeman or a fireman or a social worker or a teacher or a medic need ongoing support and help and often more than that, the prison service will find itself further down the list. And who is going to offer this support and help ? And will it count against you, generally with your colleagues or more widely, on your work record ? Stress is one of those catchall terms, with more holes than a colander.

In the past, a stressful job meant that you grew roses at the weekend. In an increasing number of employment models, there is no weekend. If you are shortstaffed, fewer people have to work longer hours and that idea comprises several aspects too – keeping a job, earning enough money almost always means overtime, overtime means tired out, tired out means bad temper, bad temper means doing the job less well – and the standoff between inmate and turnkey solidifies into disappointment, distemper and communication breakdown. It isn’t what we want. It’s what we’ve got.

A colleague opined yesterday that if this is the “Boris bounce” the Conservative Party needs to invest in a new trampoline. And a new look at the prison service. Soon.

The newest arrival in the house over my back wall is a yapping dog – a noise I hate. But it could always be worse

Yazz singing The Only Way is Up

and when the other day I went to see an old friend who had finally decided to sell her charming Victorian cottage, I banged my nose on the door of my own expectations.

Generally speaking (there are always exceptions, rules are proved by them) those of us who have a room want a flat, if you have a flat you want a house and so on, up the scale to something better. So I had always viewed her achievement as enviable. Helen (not her real name) knew what she was about 20 years before I did – that or I risk being as feckless as my mother described herself – and yes, I checked the word in the OUD before I used it.

So we sat in the dusk while she told me about finding the new place and the help of various friends, and the conveyancing solicitor, and I must have said something like “So the time had come …” “You could say that” she said and told me the horrid story. Please note, the details that I give are the details I was given and by giving them, I am not making sweeping statements. I have spent my life not making unqualified generalisations.

On one side is a property owned by a major housing association which for the last many years has been the home of what I call a screamer, ie never speaks only hollers, from the Horn of Africa, whose idea of child discipline is to zip her children into the trampoline and let them get on with it while she telephones, chats to her friends, drinks through the day and finds another father for another child (she is up to six).

Any polite intervention by my friend or indeed anybody else is met with “I can do anything I like!” and she probably can, violence inferred or actual.

In response to her calls down the years, the housing association has told Helen that they could not intervene because there were “social services’ implications” which probably means the rental of the property and the financial maintenance of the woman as the mother of however many children is a cheaper alternative than putting the children into care. Contraception, anyone ? What you might call a circular model.

On the other side is an Argentine couple with two sons who like to let off steam. Morning, noon and night and most weekends, unchecked. Of course they are now at school during the day but they make up for it when they are there, “expressing themselves” I hear it called – but do they have to do that unthinkingly, all the time ?

Last summer, when Helen found the screamer arranging speakers in the trees outside, she said aghast “You can’t do that.” Words were exchanged, Helen took a picture and within 20 minutes, two policemen appeared and accused her of taking pictures of the neighbour’s children, without her permission, and all that that implies. She offered her phone which was not checked. “I cried all night” said Helen. “Being accused of being a paedophile was my lowest ebb.” The next morning, unwilling to let this stand, she rang the local police station and was led by a sympathetic officer through making an appropriate complaint. (I was always told there is a good guy in every cop shop – but first you have to find this person.)

From then on, she was on her way. She squared everything up without lying and, having found her new place, she sold to a pair of thugs who just happen to be doctors. Heaven keep them away from any ear/nose/throat or trauma of mine. By the time you read this, she will have packed 25 years into Kiwi driven vans and set out to start again, somewhere she can sleep at night and go out in the garden in the summer and still hear herself think. Good luck to her.

And I came home, shut the front door, looked at all my advantages and counted my blessings. Again. Forget the yapper.

Putting to one side (sorry chaps) Holland and Barrett, and Lloyds and Boots and all the other multis selling vitamins, supplements, wholefood, vegan cosmetics and related things which comprises a big market now, there are smaller firms selling the same stuff and other things at seriously inflated prices. This is “you get what you pay for” which means that the speaker has just found a pore reducer or toad venom cream which costs the earth but appears to work and he/she will be shelling out for it for the foreseeable future. This is the opposite of the significant social group for whom the word “cheap” is positively erotic.Never mind if it fits, works or suits – it is cheap.

As someone who bought three cheap brushes one after the other in the attempt to save money, and had to throw them all away, I am mortified by false economy and not a big fan of cheap for the sake of it. So it is with joy that I can report that modestly priced O’Keeffe’s (hand, foot, body and pledged refund) works on me. Everybody’s skin is different and hooray for that.

But I recall being offered shampoo from a prestigious French range for £30. “Sorry” I said “too rich for my blood.” Shampoo has been one of my inexpensive successes. Shine is a shampoo bar in a tin from a small company in Brighton. It’s so good I took it to the hairdresser I can only afford three times a year, where staff and stylist were excited especially as it is biodegradable and the tin is recyclable.

I don’t get the bare ankles through the winter.

“photograph by Ronald Jansen”

It started as summer shaded into autumn (if these seasonal divisions any longer apply), to show off your real or fake tan from top to bottom (ooh !) but above tacky trainers and under an ill fitting coat, it’s a look that falters through a long wait for the bus (or sweltering in the jampacked tube) into Northern European angry cerise.

I don’t get woke – yes, I know what it means roughly but I don’t care.

“thank you Kafka”

The commitments of my youth – the things I commit to, for and against – have stayed largely the same and I am not looking for a new title. Being a victim of any kind of fashion – spoken or worn – was never on my list of things to do.

I don’t get not replying or not turning up. That’s not cool, it’s rude – upsetting even. Apparently everything is “perfect” (not my favourite word) till it’s not what you want to do – and then you just fink out. Professionally or personally, learning to confront – learning to defuse, decline and shed – learning to say a controlled “no” is part of growing up. And it takes most of us a while.

There are things I will never get because they are not my taste – football or reality television –

“first Croatian reality football show”

but I am amazed that the allegedly controlling bodies of the sport are amazed about racism in football, just as I am surprised that the watchers are surprised that the high cost of revealing most of yourself if not all on camera is depression and death.

I will never get two for one, let alone three for one. Buy as you need. Yes of course, there is always a happy exception – where you think “oh, good !” and grab it – but not often.

I don’t get “not a problem” as a rejoinder when you thank a sales assistant. Of course it’s not a problem, I find myself muttering, it’s your job. And I am not rational about “bored of” as a syntactical construction. I was taught to say bored with but fortunately it doesn’t apply because boredom is not my problem.

A woman was looking at a Beatrix Potter alphabet (BP’s character with appropriate letters) turned to me spontaneously. “Isn’t that pretty ?” I agreed. “And we need pretty.” I agreed again. I don’t get throwing ugly at me and telling me it’s all right really, like whoever thought that plastic tree guards on reafforestation projects would be “all right” ? And now we discover it is expensive to retrieve the guards and the polymers are poisoning the soil. I don’t get it.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion though these are shaped differently once they are in print or other public domain– passing as they do through various and several pairs of hands and lips, sensibilities and character counts ie change a word and you change the meaning. When somebody is described as a friend of this public person or that, you kind of wish that guaranteed keeping your trap shut. So.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, as I say, but I don’t know the Sussexes and I don’t have a very clear sense of the structure within which the Royals function, actual or expected – the Court and so on. It was Prince Philip who came up with “The Firm” – is that just the family or the outfit that surrounds the family as well ? – and that is as near to a grasp of it as I can get. I don’t know anything about courts but I know a bit about companies and how they run.

This roil (not misspelt) was in the stars – astrological as opposed to internet. Grumbly rumblers trailing conflict, standoff and negative expectation not to mention old fashioned upheaval are to be expected. (What ? I hear you say … More ? Oh, yes.)

This is about a terribly dangerous confusion, between public and private, knowing the words but not what they mean, between them and us. Elizabeth I had a necromancer, alchemist and mathematician called Dr. John Dee. It is devoutly to be hoped that our present Queen and her son the next in line have somebody as farsighted, imaginative and intellectually reliable to call on.

I have never thought of myself as a Royalist but I did not want President Blair or any other president heretofore. When the Royals get it right, I cheer, and when they don’t – well, they don’t. Nobody gets it right all the time . But the Queen is old and deserves a gentler end to her story of devotion than this.

In the past, it was a fine compliment to be described as having common sense. Common sense is out of fashion, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth. From Crossrail and HS2, to air travel and pollution, to John Lewis and artificial intelligence – that sense of overview, being unafraid to change your collective mind, doing things in stages and securing the tent pegs bit by bit in the gale – is missing. Crossrail and JL are looking for a miracle, AI will create one and by then none of us will be able to breathe.

“Well” you hear people say, shrugging. “I don’t like it much but it’s how we live now.” Unthinking, beyond trite. For example, this was always a tough town, big cities often are but they have an underbelly like every other great beast. Several. Some are horrible, a parallel life, frankly terrifying. While another can be velvet and you learn to look for that or bits of it, by being willing to put in as well as take out. Like the man in the market Wal finally took aside and said “Look this can’t be right…” having been charged, he thought, much too little. The vendor insisted it was right and Wal said he didn’t understand. George (not his name) looked him straight in the face and said “’Cos you’re the nicest customer we’ve ever had.”

On the bus yesterday I was greeted by a teacher from a local primary I have only met half a dozen times with “Anna, how are you ? Happy New Year !” and kissed on both cheeks. Oh, I hear you mutter sourly, must have had a tax rebate … Do I care ? She’s been really quite unwell, she was better and I got the backwash. Lucky me. We used to be taught and teach that it was just as quick to be pleasant as unpleasant. God knows, I can be as out of sorts, as unreasonably as anybody else. But to be pleasant just because it’s nicer that way isn’t a new discovery, the spin off of some frightfully expensive trendy book. It doesn’t mean I don’t think and it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It is the way I have always lived and it’s the way I live now.

What would you like to hear first, the good news or the bad news ? If I give you the good news, you will probably only read that bit and I couldn’t blame you. If I give you the bad news first, you probably won’t read me at all. And anyway you have probably already heard it, exhaustively. Or I could be sneaky and mix them up – shades of Glenda Slagg.

The hellebore bloomed on Christmas Day. Two self seeding white cyclamen managed a bloom each and the winter broom scared up a blossom. Hellebore’s other name is Christmas Rose and as there isn’t a green finger on the Raeburn hands, I was thrilled.

The first Christmas tree was dumped on 27 December, smack in the middle of the pavement. A fine for this is only applicable if you nab the dumper – a pursuit which should become a very lucrative electronic game because – unless you are prepared to turn into Lace Curtain Lil and keep watch with a high power hose – dumpers are harder to spot than snow leopards.

Terrestrial television gets the Golden Belch for the worst programming I can remember – except for The Tiger Who Came To Tea, a tiger whose skin moved in wonderful animation as it does in life and with the right voice (David Oyelowo).

Everybody was away – upstairs, next door both side and most of the street – so I got the silence I love on Christmas Day.

At the shops on Boxing Day, everybody was tired and pale and washed out and marked down. Extended shop hours give people a working schedule which is frankly unkind. And no, the answer isn’t machines.

You can’t say that the Australian bush fires were in the background – they felt very present – and since we can’t rescue or heal millions of burnt animals, their bodies will go back to the ravaged soil. What will happen to the homeless humans is another matter.

Now that Mr.Trump has stamped his thoughtless foot on Iranians in Iraq, British troops are in the Iranian firing line. And the Foreign Office has to tell people not to go there. Gosh, I wonder why ?

Is there a diplomat with a brain who can apply himself or herself to getting the young woman claiming gang rape out of Cyprus before she has a total breakdown or kills herself or both ? Once she is steadied – and that will take time – she will have to face some sort of hearing in the country where the offence (whatever it was) took place but properly represented. And Cypriot tills should stop ringing long enough to consider that this might have happened to somebody they know, somebody’s sister or somebody’s daughter. They have sex too and with people as distasteful as the young Israelis spirited quickly away so as not to disturb trade agreements (tills again). Nobody goes to Ayia Napa for the view.

They do go to the beautiful Alpine village which is the alleged model for the village in Disney’s Frozen, thousands of them, mostly from the Far East, dragging suitcases and expectation in the way that has come to make worldwide tourism and “anybody can do anything” frankly distasteful. You want to read about what the future in China’s hands may mean ? Read about Hallstatt. And stay home or go to a local resort.

Does anybody ever read those long lists of books and pop records, future television productions and films which fill unsatisfactory pages in papers ? A list is a list is a list, it is not intrinsically interesting and I haven’t the brainspace to carry around the media equivalent of a large box of Milk Tray.

The best book I got this Christmas came from Oxfam in Kensington High Street and it cost £3. It is called The Big Screen by David Thomas and it makes you think through the overview of cinema and all the other screens, I have chosen to read it rather than watching BBC4’s latest Nordic noir which is more like Nordic noodle.

If ever there was an occasion when it is wholly necessary to live each day at a time, it is New Year.