Annalog

Yesterday (our meeting postponed by various occurrences on her side and mine) my son’s partner gave me a scented candle she had bought for my birthday three months ago.  I am not big on the idea but encounter them individually.  She and her older daughter conferred about what the smell reminded them of and mentioned a town in Sicily

where they had lived.  It is the  last name of an old  friend .

This morning I read an interview with James Ellroy whose troubles haven’t derailed his talent, and there was a paragraph about his most recent book (The Enchanters) which features “a real life Hollywood private eye “ whom I had  brief but meaningful acquaintance with at the beginning of my determination for any job other than secretarial.   I still shrug away from the word journalist because I remember years in which I was told over and over again that I wasn’t really a journalist.   I have never known what that meant, what I tried to do and failed at, by other people’s reckoning.    It shook me.  I don’t think I thought I was a journalist but I think I thought I was trying for what we might call the hoop – some sort of acknowledged working role.  

This morning I couldn’t write.   I pushed ideas around in my head, like unexplained items with the toe of your shoe.   I could plead the heat. I was stupefied.  I wasn’t going to meet anybody on the bus because nobody rode a bus in London who didn’t have to – they are airless   I didn’t have to work. There is no deadline, no boss.    I do it because I do it.  Unlike the wonderfully talented  caricaturist Quentin Crewe who draws almost like breathing,  I don’t write all the time, I talk preparatory to writing.

Every so often somebody asks why don’t I do a book about … and you have only to look at the  background to The Salt Path to know why I don’t.   It’s 20 years plus since I met with a publisher and while of course there are exceptions and generalisations are pretty meaningless, it’s only got worse.   There is no book I would go through for that.   We publish far too many books a year – think about the trees and the paper! – and I don’t want to publish tosh.

Today is the birthday of Simone Veil,

one of my few heroes.   Now, that’s a life.    I suppose it is inevitable that as you get older you wish occasionally that you had done more and better – though sadly to do better in media requires commitment by the people round you – and it may not be there, colleagues or employers.

Most of the time I am passionately grateful for the life I have had, professional and personal. For the most part, I can look my shortcomings in the face.  I ask other people to do it, it’s only fair that I should do it too – though that attitude to life inevitably leads sometimes to doubt and even despair.   Some people can’t live like that – I learned that late but I learned it.

I could tell you about what I am reading … but then not everybody is as in love with the printed word as me.  And you can only talk to people when you can talk to them.   I have to make that happen for you by a combination of sweat and the grace of heaven we call writing. 

The connections fascinate me, like the town of Lipari and the fixer Fred Otash, with which I began.  Then I have to make them interesting if not fascinating for you and today, I don’t think I can.

By next week, I shall have had the first of two important appointments (they were all important) at Moorfields Eye Hospital.   Perhaps we shall be able to breathe and I shall have lived through doubt long enough to try again.

Readers have always surprised me by what they do and don’t respond to.  A lot of people are away on holiday and I enjoy feedback which means I suppose that I am terribly old fashioned: I prefer the illusion of dialogue to the desperation of “putting it out there”.  If that’s for you, it’s for you.  I will try again next week.    

…oops! My ‘wonderful hands’ is going away and I shall not be filing until the beginning of the week commencing 28^th July.  Just think, I may recover!

First on a personal note:

No, MB

Not AR, not PM , not ever

Can’t reply  – computer ate your details.  Do get in touch.  (ends)

On a train  many years ago the practical sensible “put your money where your mouth is” activist Lesley Abdela asked  if I had thought about politics.  I was torn between being flattered that someone who clearly knew what she was about would mention such a thing, and recoil.   It’s a long time ago and I don’t remember what I hope was a graceful reply.   Me in politics came up a couple of other times. 

The best answer I ever gave was to a young man in an audience somewhere along  the line when I worked for Cosmopolitan.  “I’m in politics” I said.   “Anything to do with people is to do with politics.  From the Greek – polis – a people state.”   

Not party politics. 

I look at the last lot from Cameron to  Sunak, each with their strengths as well as weaknesses, and think  that it must be mandatory to  study the high wire.    And if the monied Truss had the grace and imagination of a cardboard box, she  would  donate or hand back the PM’s pension she doesn’t deserve or need.  Starmer is having a hard time – well that’s the difference between  knowing something should be done and hating how it is implemented.  He is in politics, not popularity.    Speak As You Find (see title).

Usually , if you say you’re going to call the council, whoever you’re with shakes a wise head patiently and says “Don’t expect too much.”  And I expected nothing. 

Desperate with lack of response from the neighbouring landlord,  I rang the local town hall.

Fully automated, not a human.  So I  searched and I found the section I was looking for  and  – eureka ! – an email address.  I wrote a brief letter of appeal.  It was acknowledged with a signature  to which I rereplied saying “Don’t leave this – this is a way of doing things” and the addressee turned up at the behest of his manager, took pictures, asked questions, checked.  I was so grateful.   SAYF.

When I grew up, there was the BBC and, barring Radio Luxemburg, that’s what there was,  And I was longtime loyal.  You have read me criticise what the news coverage has become – alongside that fact that only one member of current Cabinet I have seen presents well on camera – and Glastonbury  is not for me, nor Oasis or a dozen other things.

And if I wonder about who thought about  what acts were booked and why at Glastonbury, I presume all question was subsumed into “it’ll be all right”, “might cause a bit of stir”  and profit.

My friend Buns (a longer life than mine in various aspects of broadcasting) thinks the right to protest is sacrosanct and if you don’t like it, turn off.

Bearing in mind how it was set up, what happened was predictable.   But there was no broadcasting contingency plan (as in Broadcasting Buck and Cover).  

Five years ago before the seat of Director General was offered to Tim Davie, a wiser head than mine suggested forcefully that it was an impossible job,

which should by run by two people.   I disagree with two, which leads immediately to factions – but three, a triumvirate – yes.   Then there is always somebody to give a casting vote.  As it is, nothing we have heard (remember, it’s your BBC ! they say) from sordid Savile onwards demonstrates decision.  It demonstrates avoidance, moving here, saying there, leaving a little time, when in doubt have a meeting., publicise the findings – that makes us really feel better !

There is at least as much  problem in British business in management as in workforce.   And the BBC like the  NHS is overprovided with middle management ie far too many people with vested interests, reporting just so much to somebody  else and then waiting for suitable action.   What we might call The Unstoppable  Buck. 

And this in  weary parallel with scheduling that leaves you going for a walk or reaching for a book.    Yes, such choices are always personal.   But at the moment there isn’t much choice.

Hence SAYF.   

Suddenly 

a columnist whom you have basically distrusted or disagreed with down the years  says something with which you wholly agree.     I used to get communications which began “ I don’t always agree with you  but at least I know you’ll tell  me the truth” – and none of that  “your truth, my truth” thing  which is really about perception.  You see what you see and it means what it means.   Yes, of  course, personal taste, experience, upbringing  –  but they come later.   How restful to have a clear statement.

I can’t make the  national political situation or international unrest (admitted and/or implied) uplifting.   We are in a long dark corridor and I hope to God there is a door to the light at the end of it.

How many times am I going to be told about  or read about new homes, “affordable housing”, (affordable to whom ?), building on green belt –  when I cannot remember an insight into  how much stuff is standing vacant|?   Surely we should be able to rule against anything standing empty longer than a year – mandatory to sell after that ?   What about what can be fixed ?  Yes, I know  mending and making do is only on the periphery of fashion as a current concept  but until  it is public knowledge that we haven’t got enough housing,

I question it.

The dependence created by the NHS cripples it.   Going to the doctor or to the hospital ?   What about going to bed ?   Numbers is not just a book of the Bible.   It is the problem – numbers in school, numbers in hospital, numbers besieging every  facility to the detriment of function.  

What happened to personal responsibility and  common sense ?  Yes, you can pat my head and say  wonderingly “Poor old dear !” but until we begin to think less about who will do what for us and what can do for ourselves, scupperdom  comes  ever closer.

A BBC producer wrote to invite me to take part in a programme to discuss failure.  We arranged to speak and I began to think.  I looked up a thesaurus of quotations.  No women on failure – only men.  And then I sat down and thought.   Failure has not been something to which I have given a lot of attention.   I was focused on survival, figure the terms out afterwards.   And I thought about how this attitude was formed.  Home and the 11 Plus exam.  Me worrying about it (I had missed a lot of school through illness) and  the  “pass or fail” thing.   I was taught” Pass or fail is for exams, not for life.” And I asked myself –  flat question, forget the qualifications and circumstance – at what had I failed ? 

by Rochelle Dulay Razon

And answered:   marriage and contraception.

So that’s what I said to the producer when he rang.  He asked what I meant.  I explained – two marriages , both ended in divorce – and abortion.  No good being evasive and saying contraceptive failure. And we went on from there.  

The system under which we live is as deeply  imperfect

as any other though it has its pluses as well as defaults.  And it has long been our way nationally  to let somebody else make the decision and then complain about it.   We have  above all else too many people who evade work – it seems they can always get money from  somewhere – and people who do work and aren’t paid enough on which to survive.             

This isn’t a generational Dunkirk (look it up).

We are avoiding the scale of what is implied and threatening us.  The will is there but the machinery is  too cumbersome.   Sometimes inclusive is too expensive.   I don’t want another  person of dual nationality who commits a ghastly crime interned int British prisons.  Strip of them of our nationality and send them home.  There aren’t many and they cost us a fortune in prison.    Make it a condition of living here that you speak discernible English (loads of us waiting to help you learn)  and have  a qualification.   And close the gates for  say a year while we figure out how to stop the islands sinking,  literally or metaphorically. 

I don’t know anything about Bruce Springsteen

except odd bits of music, the profile and the wonderful “stand up and be counted” riff in the face of Trump and what he represents.   And I don’t know anything about Johnny Depp except that he has a face which has been used by an industry

which  does that: chooses a  face, builds what is now called a brand round it  – and devil take the hindmost.  It works for you – great.  It doesn’t ?    Good luck with that, bottomless supply of faces.   I never underestimated the price of fame from my twenties when I was told that something I had written could make a hit  and asked “Do you know what that involves ?”    And it was spelt out.  

I had no great insight, I just didn’t go further.   When recognition came, I was doing something I could do.  I did it well,  apparently it worked for a lot of other people and  I had a shape to my life which enabled me to keep going, learn, limit and appreciate.  

I was propped up by all sorts of lucky breaks, starting with my parents (two  lone gun loners if ever there were) who imbued  me with a profound sense of self.   I didn’t access this insight easily or quickly, it was ongoing and still is – but I bless them. 

The  Institute of Group Analysis advised me that I either dominated the group or the group dominated me.  One on one would be more helpful.   Thank you.  I am as fascinated by  groups as wary of them.  Sometimes, one is all it takes – to change minds, to give you an insight, to change the course of history, to  overcome and make change.   Change is another big little word.

Most of us fear change, whether it’s BT or banking.   Wisest thing I was ever taught about change is that it will come. 

Better to face it than try to build a wall against it.  Walls tumble and bricks fall on your toe.

You can’t blame the decline of a nation on one thing, there are  contributory factors but one of th things that gives me the creeps about  where we are now is the avoidance of benign individuality  – your face, your nose, your wrinkles, your heroes, your health, you as an entity.   So  the rise of fat injections at the same time as the decline in helpful vaccines is fascinating if depressing.  I don’t want any child to be ill with measles.  Unchecked it is a harmful killer – see in the US right now.   And  today I read for the first time of the negatives of weight loss by injection ie face falls.   Well, I could have told you that.   Which will mean more injections of course.  Lucrative. 

This week’s experience of  my “one” was a Tuesday night wracked with  anxiety

about the landlord of the flat next door, long story, won’t bore you but Buns issued the rallying call-  the Party Wall Act.  And on Wednesday morning I spoke severely to myself “- Come on, you’re a big girl, you can do this”, and did what I feared to do.  I read on line.  I found a group who would refer me to Party Wall surveyors in my area, I could ask advice so I filled out the form and I waited, secure in the knowledge that I can deal with the phone.

A man rang and asked if he could help  me, stating his name, all his details and his relevant experience (he said 15 years, thousands of clients ). I asked permission to give him background and when I referred to afore mentioned landlord, I called him a toad. (Sorry, toads.)   “Why ?”  he asked.  I replied “A man who thinks women are a lower form of life.”  “I bite them” he said and when I laughed, he added “and if I don’t Henry (NHN) would.”   I asked  who was Henry ?  “Miniature dach” he said.  “Don’t go anywhere without him. “  After a few more sentence he said “Look, money aside. Let me draft this letter for you, you’ll OK it, we’ll send it on my bells and whistles stationery and let’s see.   And if you need muscle, I’d be delighted.”   And that’s what he did.   One.          

Our hero

stands in one of those odd suits – wide legs, long jacket, mile wide reveres – looking out at the lights of the city below and as the door opens, he turns to meet his fate and says “Hello, beautiful.”    Or he leaves her to a far far better man and touches his (inevitable for the period) hat  saying “’Bye, beautiful.”   Beautiful is not a word you hear much now and if Andrew Tate is inspiring young men, you can understand why. 

There are all sorts of  beauties – of youth or age or light, colour or concept or gesture – as well as what the dictionary calls “a combination of qualities that delights the aesthetic senses.”    But it is not often offered as a pleasantry.  Perhaps  beauty is too formal, too demanding, too (get ready for this) gender specific, though I think beauty just is.. 

Which takes us smartly back to what  you or I think of as beauty  – even the implication of it being in the eye of the beholder.   

The two best things  Lily (NHN) ever did for me  was to send me  a goldstone heart  and a Turkish proverb :”A heart in love with beauty never grows old.”  It’s not so much that I look for it as recognize it in my own terms when I see it – and hold myself free to comment.

A man came down the aisle of the bus, great jacket, crisp jeans, etc and oddly becoming spectacle frames.   As he sat down beside me, I said “I’m so glad you sat down there, now I can tell you how attractive those glasses are.”   He looked at me and thanked me.  “I always notice glasses” I explained.  “Worn them since I was eight.”  

He talked  quietly – you know how you think some people are shy ? It doesn’t stop them doing anything but it costs. And he made several references to changing his life and doing things before he was too old.    So I asked.  He looked at me and said very quietly “62”.   I thought he was in his late forties and said so.    (aside:  I have learned long ago – better an unexpected truth than an anticipated  evasion).  We talked (I think chat is a four letter word.)  I’d say his appearance was harmonious, what I call almost beautiful – no mean compliment.  My mother was almost beautiful.

Having  taken leave of him, I walked up to where  a number of people had gathered in a sort of pool for the next bus I wanted and waited.  At the back was  a man – middle height, middle age, ordinary clothes, glasses and I grinningly extended my left arm to the bus, saying to him as we drew level “Beauty before age”. I know, it’s a reversal of  “age before beauty” but he grinned and waved me forward.  

The journey was lit by sun, I saw a Swedish neighbour and two other women I know by sight, all of us uplifted by the clearing of the cloud and momentary ease. My back was to the glass partition, round which  the man from the  queue put his head before he got off.    “’Bye, beautiful” he said.   As I turned with delight, he waved from the pavement, he kissed his hand, I kissed mine.   Less a truth than an invocation – oh the power of words. 

I am horrified  by tweaks and fillers and Botox, just as wary as  at the constant bombardment of images and being like somebody else.  And young men

are currently more likely to footle around with all this stuff  than young women.  So the procedure isn’t about what it does but how it make you feel about yourself.   And at an estimated £200 a pop, it’s our old friend “Because I’m worth it” – an insecurity  exploited by the burgeoning men’s beauty  business.  So I read delightedly  of a Dutch university  where research indicated that if you want to be more attractive – smile.   And again, you can’t fake it.  Most of us recognize that upward swing of the lips while the eyes stay unmoved as not a smile at all.             

Such  courage and joy did those two men  give me, I hope it was mutual.  And thus,  I walked  much further, quietly, in and out of places I didn’t know, my heart  eased that in this sad old bad old world, there is still room for the beholder, and beauty.

Sadly, no copy this week courtesy of BT (copper line fault). Till we meet again…

Do you think of Granny with her tomatoes?  Or – not telling – often something deeply important – big, bad, ugly?   And when you do – because you blurt it out or plan to tell this person or that person?   And not open to everybody but unbottling on media  with the illusion you are telling ”everybody” ? With no guarantee of how people – the person opposite, the chosen person or people in general will react?   End of control.  Silence broken.

A woman spoke about being raped.  She was 16 or so at the time, and told nobody.   She knew nothing about me, there was no reason why she should tell me.  I am certainly not the first person she told. Now in her early fifties, there are good things and bad in her life (as in everybody’s life). Is this is some kind of test?  that she tells you about the formative power of this experience and her response to it, deciding then if she wants to get to know you. I was mostly unknown to her – anybody can check on line…  And although occasionally I was part of the conversation we came back to her. Over several hours, the shadow over her life.

Chef Jamie Oliver is now very emotional about what a bad time he had at school with  undiagnosed dyslexia. 

In spite of all his successes, personal and professional, this is the thing he  took  unto himself,  kept quiet about and worked against, and now wants to talk about .  You wonder what the process was, that got him tested, let alone ready to speak.   Except most of us  hanging on to something  come to realise – better out than in, even if you have several goes at  getting it out to somebody who understands  

And memory plays an unsettling role. A 74 year old surgeon abused hundreds of children in Western and Central France between 1989 and 2014.   |One of them, now in his 30s, then a 13 year old boy, was suddenly   sent a summons to the police station and discovered there were notebooks, names, records on line …  The trauma he had buried so deeply he didn’t remember it  got in the way of his development.  And not surprisingly when it came to light, he had a major crisis.  Few have chosen to be named or speak on the record.   Another young man abused at the same time, discovered it or suspected it earlier, using drink and drugs to bottle it up until he died.  So you don’t know what you are locking away. 

You only know there is something, some shadow impeding you, something wrong.  Pain. And the fear about acknowledging the shadow, the block, the problem – because you may get it wrong, point a finger at the wrong person.  

So bottling risks becoming a trade off between your flawed life and another person’s flawed if not destructive behaviour. 

Acknowledging a problem is like throwing a pebble in a pool, worse if it is serious and of longstanding..  The ripples spread outward and may involve all sorts of other people.   For example, your child has a skill but pushes and pushes and pushes (Jamie Oliver).  Of course you accept it, it’s just him.  But maybe – and then it is later discovered – there is an impetus.  A neurotic driver.   I am sure I did not have the career I might have had because of what my careers mistress called “different life goals”  ie  I wanted a life.  

I wanted something like my parents’ life I learned painfully that I was not either one of my parents.  My opportunities and choices were different.  But my period of working all the hours God sent was quite short.           

And I had parents from the very beginning who told me always to tell them.   How do you feel if your child now an adult says “I couldn’t tell you”?   And time passing prejudices what has happened.  Never easy, it becomes more complicated. 

I am not keen on the present glamour of the confessional, but it will be useful to somebody.  We used to call trying against all odds “the grit in the oyster” adding “no grit? no pearl.” High price to pay.

I was buying a book in a  charity shop, as you do if you can, when I saw a face I knew, an actor I admire. 

And I paused because he was with friend/wife/partner and it was private time. But as I left the shop I said his name with a question mark.   He said “Yes” and I said “Thank you for years of pleasure.”  The woman said “What a lovely thing to say”, he shook my outstretched hand and asked “But don’t I know you?”  And I said I thought not and left.  This was not  AR discovery day, this was my tribute to him.  He is what we used to call a character actor and I learned his name because I enjoyed his work.

A “you and your clothes” column has to be about some sort of celebrity (to increase the chances of your reading it) this week features Jason Isaacs,

again a very good actor and no I have never seen The White Lotus, and he sounds delightfully hurt paw/ leave me alone/who’d be an actor? / let me get on with it but he is quoted as saying he doesn’t understand why people buy clothes on line.   Oh my hero!   And he talks about the magic of suits made to measure by Chris Kerr among others as “they look better and you look better and people comment all the time.”

No I do not fancy Jason Isaacs, I do not want him in my bed (you leave my bed alone).  I do not plan to stand in the rain to tell him how much I admire him.  I just think he is aesthetically pleasing and an interesting person.  And as Desmond Morris (surrealist painter and zoologist) says of his long long friendship with David Attenborough (you remember him) “we are still working and we are still interested.” 

I couldn’t have read this at a better time. Morris is 97. Attenborough 99 and neither one of them diet, exercise beyond common sense and comfort  but they are passionately interested in the world.     

When you say this, people look at you sideways and hunt for a reason to excel. Why should anybody talk to you ?  Occasionally you meet somebody who doesn’t want to talk – so you withdraw gracefully after a couple of sentences.    I haven’t got a reason in the world that anyone should talk to me except it is the world, my world, full of people.   Some I meet again, some I know in different gradations of knowing (if I cared to categorise and I don/t, much) and some I discover.  

Like the attractive young woman in the bus queue yesterday, from Bangalore

(she told me).  I notice the scar on her forehead – you couldn’t not.  And I asked about it and then apologized, I didn’t mean to be tactless.  “You weren’t” she said.  “You wanted information.”  She is a doctor, she is studying to specialize in treatment of the liver. 

We sat on the bus, she asked questions, I asked questions.  We were joined by one of my bus/shopping friends who had been ill, pressed my hand and left us to talk.  When we parted,  the doctor I had met shook hands with me,  and I wished  her every success.

Of course somebody has to begin this dialogue and nowadays, many people are nervous of that.  Josh the gardener (a mere 32) said he liked to speak to people when he is working in a park but they are wary.  There is a long long list of why wary – the state of the world (geographical), ditto political, fear, inhibiting technology and doubt in your own social ability.

But as Josh has everything going for him including verbal ability – he’d probably get away with it as he did with encouraging an OAP whom he met while working to the delight of his boss. 

But it is to do with feeling you can get in to an exchange and if you don’t like it, you can get out again.  For this, I bless my mother.   I have put my foot in my mouth (you do) .   But I can apologise/retreat/retrieve and shut up if I have to. No shame, no embarrassment.  Still interested in everything.  Don’t you like the idea of Attenborough and Morris as fairy godfathers?

OMC *

Prue Leith

set me off  by suggesting a day for  remembrance, personal things to remember, we don’t remember enough.   Speak for yourself..  Pixie Lott wanted us to wear green sweaters for Mental Health Day.   Difficult colour, you risk looking ill even if you aren’t.  We have formally remembered the anniversaries of Victory in Europe Day (said in full because I don’t think many remember what VE stands for) and one of the concentration camps – that I don’t remember which one is not disrespectful, it’s because they were all (and there far more of them than we know about) as repellently destructive as each other.   So sooner of later, some group will come up with New Hope Day and I shall scream.  Hence the title.

The percolator

died.  The innards which in any sensible pot of the same nature would be metal or glass were heavy duty plastic and wore out.  I bought two such percolators from Lakeland.   Made in China.  Still offered on the website with the thoughtful addendum “this product is no longer available.”  So why feature it?  

Investigating online replacement, new wheeze is miraculously cheap coffee pot with grossly inflated postage, or one of the behemoths who say of the same product “just the pot and lid” or show picture of the same product, in the same ad – pot, lid, diffuser and cap – and no way to verify which is accurate.

Am I the only person who recoils from a 36 or 72 hour deodorant? 

The skin is the biggest organ of the body and sweat is a necessary elimination of it.  Do people seriously believe only dirty people wash?  Or is soap and water now so expensive and washing so time consuming that you would rather seal your body for up to 3 days at a time?   That and synthetic clothing?  Oh dear.

Do you have to show me all the places you can spray the aforementioned   – down your knickers, under your bosom, between your legs, across your feet and back?  Anybody ever heard of allergy?  No thank you.

Does it make me laugh to watch men sniffing each other during some ball game, turned on by the “whoosh” ?   Perfumes in detergents in whatever form are a matter of personal taste.  I avoid them.   Just as Dove

may be a very good product but  I can’t stand the smell.

Is it amusing to watch a girl so ensnared by the killer cologne  some male person has sprayed down his trousers that, when she catches a whiff as he goes past in a darkened arena, she pursues him, nose to bum ?

Incontinence is a real problem and surprisingly common, but sympathy erodes with having  pads and pants explained to me  about every 12 minutes throughout a slow afternoon.   I always thought “letting it all hang out” sounded most uncomfortable. 

When the printer

had another seizure, AJ ordered the new one which was delivered by a charming man who brought it in at my request.  “Now I need you to do me a favour” I said.  He looked startled.  I took him by the hand and showed him the outgoing machine.  “Just promise me” I said “ that you will only  give this to someone you really don’t like.”  “Bad as that?” he asked.  “Twice what I paid for it in ink cartridges, paper waste and sheer inconvenience.”  Epson,  my only complaint against the John Lewis Partnership in 40 years as a customer.

Former PM John Major says that as a society we should have moved beyond prison.   Indeed.  Will is required. 

You remember Will ?  No not Shakespeare.  We have to commit time and money and choose between punishment and rehabilitation.  Prison services work hard to no clear end.

Manny tells me his Co -op in darkest Norfolk is entering the fourth week of depleted shelves.  So I hope we will examine the shattering fall in national production of essential food stuffs.  Yes, now – before it hits us.  Because it will (see Just in Case by Tim Lang, a report for the National Preparedness Commission on UK food security).   And back the farmers.

* OMC stands for Off My Chest.

Luxuries are

having the newspaper delivered and stamps.  There’s glamour.   The whizzy young man from next door who is kindness itself arranged the one and I totter up the road to the  sub post office (where AI could be the tech servant of everything the one counterhand knows) or into the bookshop for stamps at regular intervals.  

Stamps are now so expensive that when I sent something I thought might be important through to my son, he recoiled from  the expense … and yesterday I did not watch the news because television news is so often so badly conceived and presented – and yes, I realized, looking back through old copy that I have been banging on about this for years.  Hasn’t made it any better.  While the day the new Pope

was elected (good luck and God bless) you’d have thought the entire world went into  gearbox neutral while for hours highly paid commentators said the same thing with slight variation. I read the newspaper.

The newspaper is not Holy Writ but it’s pretty  good, not that I can tell my favourite  columnists how much I approve or like them because they will be inundated with internal communication which has sadly derogated the process and using one of those hideously expensive stamps doesn’t guarantee that a letter gets through and should it, that there will be a response.

Having been the recipient of mail for years,  a loop  usually sounds like a loop, file in the waste paper basket . 

Everybody else deserves acknowledgement.  Basic PR.  How you build a public.

The lack of response is often unsettling.    Manny (NHN) has  various health problem s which he is attempting to navigate through a doctor who initiates appointments but doesn’t respond when one is requested  and a recent  exchange with the teaching hospital involved (by text) which resulted in him being sent two letters, one dated 2023 and the other 2024.  This sort of dilemma suggests sandwiches and a stool and a long long sit-in to get sense out of face to face.

Common sense

has been  unfashionable for years but perhaps when a thing is out of fashion, it is really just waiting in the wings to be reinvented and  thus – fashionable again.  

So, of course OF COURSE, the  most dangerous prisoners should be kept without other contact and access to  kettles or cooking facilities BEFORE another prison officer is injured (one with  hot oil, one with hot water) preferably before another incident.  And please, not the old “human rights” argument in dealing with people who brutalise and don’t care, already sentenced for just that.

And on the good news side, the young  staying out of university are flourishing through ( pains me to say this but I will) the positive use of AI to find key skills rather than qualifications – instead of starting with “and your degree ?” which dogged my  youth.   Graduates got the opening, especially  male graduates.  And I was one of the lucky who learned at what I call with affectionate respect the coal face – on the job – which brought me a life changing break.   The  preoccupation with degrees has been named somewhere along the line as “the paper ceiling” 

and while I can’t snipe at paper (no paper ? no journals, no books, let alone lists and where would I be without a list ?  And forget the screen – some of us really don’t like it)  I am delighted that it has only taken my lifetime to realise that, whatever else he was right about, “everybody” (that word again see annalog last week) having a degree was not former PM Tony Blair’s best effort.  What we need is opportunity, not more exams.    Not all of us are good at exams.  Oh we are bright, with wonderful skills – but they don’t fit into the framework of  pass or fail.   I was briefly employed scaling exam results while waiting to go to the US.   Ruthlessly narrow.

So thank you Hadley Freeman for putting the boot in to the last  Met Gala which was depressing in its predictability: Dominic Lawson for a perspective on Reform: and Matthew Syed for writing about time.  I wish I could tell you myself but there …