I have been haunted all week by an article I read about a mother and child who died in the most tragic and desperate of circumstances,  and simply were not missed or looked for by anyone. Heartbreaking  on every level and a lesson to all of us how easy it is to be swallowed up and disappear into isolation,  with no support and nobody even noticing. 

Basically, the mum had some kind of seizure and died at home. Her small son was unable to get help and eventually starved to death, being found dead clinging to his mothers decomposing body. 

The neighbours,  when questioned had little information about her, though all expressed shock and remorse at finding out what had literally been going on under their noses. She seems to have had no friends or family members, indeed nobody registered the fact she had not been seen for a couple of weeks. The childs school did eventually send someone round to knock on the door,  but when there was no answer they went away. No further attempts were made to gain entrance to the flat or to follow up on the initial visit, or to call the police or social services.

How can this happen in a city like London in 2018? Are we so removed from the people we live amongst that we simply fail  to register the every day comings and goings of our neighbours in a street/block of flats? 

I was reminded of that hideous and bizarre story in the news about the American family who kept their thirteen children prisoner in their home for years. The neighbours in  this ordinary mundane area with its family size houses and lawns , obligatory flagpole and those mail boxes you see in Peanuts cartoons said they had absolutely NO idea what was going on behind the net curtains. Apart from one who said that she had indeed seen children in the garden but because they were so pale and thin she assumed they were zombies. So thats ok then. 

I would like to think that our street is very different, mostly because it is a dead end so by its very nature its easier to keep track of who comes and goes and because essentially everyone who lives is here is pretty nosey. And this is a good thing. Even though a lot has changed since we first came to live here and most of the houses have now been turned into flats, meaning that there are more new faces , so its harder to keep track of exactly who lives where, we still maintain a sense of a community,  and if someone disappeared for a while somebody would be knocking on their door before long ( even if it was to complain about their wheelie bin taking up too much space). I also know that if there was an emergency , I could call on anyone in the street for help at any time of day or night and they would come. This is exactly how things should be,  but  it seems we are the exception rather than the rule which is immensely sad. 

I guess there will always be those who keep themselves to themselves,  preferring  their own company, and this is absolutely their right because some people would rather be left alone and it is not easy to intrude on someone’s fierclky guarded space. Inevitably there are people who by their very nature will eventually slip through the cracks, as gradually family and friends withdraw, too busy to stop and chat or call round ,  and there are fewer and fewer people left to notice if the  mail piles up unopened ( in the old days when milk was delivered to your doorstep, uncollected bottles of milk were always a tell tale sign). And  it seems inconceivable that some people simply do not have anyone  in their lives who cares enough to make a phone call or drop in and check all is ok. 

So, keep an eye out for those who live around you. Neighbourhoods would be happier  places if we all look out for each other a little more,  and we all know that a bit of human kindness and interaction can make all the difference. 

There is nothing more dull than having flu, the kind of flu that fools  you  into thinking you are better when  lunch comes around,  but then crash bang wallop,  by tea time you are back in bed clutching a hot water bottle with your teeth chattering like a character from Funnybones ( much loved kids books about skeletons for those who haven’t had the pleasure). And none of this is helped by that fact that lemsips and cough medecines are foul and that even the smell of lemon ginger and honey makes me feel queasy having rather overdosed of late.And for the love of God please do not offer me another Winter wellness manuka honey sweet. Ever again.

Hopefully this morning I have turned a corner,  and for the first time in about a week  have woken up without feeling that a woodpecker had been trying to drill its way into my head during the night. Apart from the odd coughing fit ( I am sure I have damaged one of my ribs with all this convulsing) things are on the mend. And after all it has only been a nasty cough and judging by the experiences of others who have had it for weeks I have got off very lightly. 

I read an article somewhere about how to tell if you had real flu or not. The criteria seemed to be what you would do if you saw a £20 on the floor, just far enough  out of reach so that to get it involved getting out of bed. It said that if you simply didnt have the energy to bother it was real flu, and if you skipped out of bed and pocketed it you were merely a little under the weather. 

Its hard to be positive about the coming of Spring when I look out of the kitchen window at a  a smudged grey sky and endless drizzle, but it IS around the corner. Already it is still light at 5pm and there are daffodils coming up in the tub outside the back door. My garlic is standing tall and green, big enough for me to see it in my  plot when I look out of the bathroom window , and the broad beans seem to have survived the squirrels who spent most of December digging up the beans as fast as I re planted them. The bees in the allotment are out foraging and they flit over the pond at the end of the garden , taking sips of water before buzzing back home to their hives.

L is in Goa at the moment and called me yesterday as he stood by the pool in the dusky Indian evening. In between filling me in on tales of motorbikes  and beaches he kept jumping up and down and when I enquired what was going on he said that there were about 20 little frogs hopping on and off his bare feet. Seeing him surrounded by lush green vegetation, with the sound of crickets in the background reminded me of Kerala. When we sat on the verandah as the heat faded from the sky, the scent of jasmine and curry in the air. Without any warning  huge dark shapes crashed through the tops of the palms as the fruit bats made their way home, settling in the foliage like long black umberellas. 

And having said that Spring is coming I have just noticed it is now snowing. Happy Monday everyone. 

So we are back on the Rusty B after a 5 week break while he/she was in the marina having  some welding done. I know boats traditionally are known as ‘she’ but Rusty B is definitely of the slightly unwashed male variety , much loved and a bit scuffed around the edges. As T says ” a bit of a rat boat”. We were in a dingly  dell part of the Kennet and Avon canal last summer, all painted enamel jugs and brass potholes, with a chintzy tea room beside the locks so that people could sit and watch as the boats came through. There was a family taking photos as I waited for T and Rusty B at the other side of the bridge having opened the lock gates. When they emerged, the dad smirked and said” don’t bother with that one”.

This morning we are in Avoncliff which is near Bath. It’s very beautiful with a gorge,  and the rushing  weir on the river Avon that runs through the village lulled us to sleep last night. There is an aqueduct over the river and a tiny railway station. The pub down the lane reminds me of a pub we went to in Wales once, a favourite of climbers which was built from wood, a bit like a glorified garden shed, the walls adorned with summit photos and mountain ranges, piles of walking  sticks at the door. I am sitting in bed with the door open and a cup of tea, the stove roaring, looking out on the joggers and dog walkers, who are all out in force along the towpath despite the soft smudged drizzle. A pair of old ladies just waltzed past in matching lilac raincoats and white galoshes like characters out of a Monsieur Hulot film, their immaculate Dalmatian dancing on the end of a scarlet lead.

Because we are always on the move ( the licence we have means that we are continuos cruisers and cannot stay in the same place for more than fourteen days) it means that we get tiny snapshots of life, a brief glimpse into the villages ( and the pub) for a short time and then we leave. We rarely stay put for longer than two nights and indeed this whole process has brought out the nomad in T who gets twitchy and will no doubt start making “it’s time we got going” noises as soon as the Archers  omnibus has finished. We both realised pretty early on that boating and speed do not go hand in hand and there is no point attempting to get anywhere fast, better to just meander along and see where we end up. It reminds me of my birth dad, a seasoned traveller who drove all over the country in a series of trucks, horse boxes and boats who always said a journey was about the journey, not the destination. Apart from anything else the boat travels at the equivalent of a brisk walking pace so speed is not of the essence. The other day we happened to be chugging alongside a couple who were in the middle of what can be described as a lively discussion as they marched along the towpath hurling insults at each other. Unfortunately there was nothing for it other than to pretend we couldn’t hear,  because much as we wished they would break into a run and leave us, or that Rusty B could speed up, we were stuck with them. 

There is a  hierarchy in the boating  world, like in all walks of life. Top of the tree are the liveaboards , people who live on their boats all year round, identified by the piles of logs, wheelbarrows and bikes strapped to the roof, alongside windowboxes and solar panels. Second are the CC’s like us,  who have our boats as floating holiday homes and who come and go, some regularly and some hardly at all, some with all the latest gadgets and matching fleeces of the Captain and First mate variety with their blazers , and those hooks you hang bananas on in their immaculate compact folding up kitchens, complete with paper flowers and lace doilies woven like spider webs on the portholes. And third, the pariahs of the canals, the hire boat folk. They have always been given a very bad press, infamous for their lack of knowledge, for their inability to open and shut locks, their speeding , drinking and loud parties. As is always the case,  people  like to have someone else to blame and as we all know there are bad apples in every woodshed. 

It must be quite interesting living in a house along one of these canals with an ever changing scene at the end of your garden. Some of these houses are quite amazing, but the  little jewels in the crown are the renovated lock keepers cottages that keep guard over every lock, with roses over the front door with apple trees and fruit cages.

In big cities I imagine the relationship between boaters and landlubbers is not always harmonious, where moorings are scarce and boats have to double moor and live right on top of one another,  and the towpaths become virtual motorways with human traffic from pedestrian to cycling variety.  One of the boating FB pages I am on is  always posting reports of increasing amounts of muggings and thefts around London,  which is pretty depressing and must be very frightening. You do feel vulnerable on a boat and boats are extremely easy to break into. But the fact that there also seems to be a spate of boaters stealing from other boaters is really grim. Bags of coal, generators, bikes. So we stay clear of these places, we already live in a city so why have our boat in one? 

So we stick to the quiet waterways where people wave cheerily as we pass, where other boaters are  friendly and welcoming, the sort of places where you see herons and kingfishers before breakfast , and in the mornings the air is thick with the smell of woodsmoke and coffee, the sort of places where for a couple of days everything seems right with the world. 

It’s hard to imagine what we will be like when we hit old age ( assuming we will still be around). Obviously I would like to think that I will be the perfect old lady, delightful and charming to all, a joy to be around, with herds of grandchildren ( hint hint T, L and  M ) hopping about as I take them camping and teach them how to cook for 30 over a fire. 

I simply can’t  imagine that my kids will do the” you have her this Christmas, we had her last year” conversation but I daresay this is inevitable. Much as I like to think things will be different,  getting old and having to accept  you are  having to rely on others for the day to day things you used to do yourself isn’t an easy transisition,  as we are finding with our sprightly and fiercely independent dad. And there is every chance I will prove to be just as fierce and challenging to my children who in turn will struggle as they try and persuade me to accept their help,  so once again history repeats itself. 

Its almost as if they have found themselves in their spacious independent living flat by mistake ( like Withnail and I, except it isn’t a holiday ).  I do not for a minute underestimate the heartbreak and sadness involved in having to leave their beloved large house and beautiful garden, a garden that kept them going but ultimately would have finished them off. Downsizing made sense, but it has been a miserable process and they, like so many others have not flourished.  Why would they? It was a choice made for practical reasons, not out of desire, a decision forced on them because there were too many stairs, it was too isolated, too big to manage, a disaster zone. Unfortunately  (and perhaps fortunately) the move coincided with increasing failing health and falls, like a  game of Jenga which can only be stacked up again and again so many times after each tumble. But at least the move has meant that in every room there are alarms and a capable and friendly warden down the corridor to pick up the pieces and reach for the phone.

But there is still one major hurdle. Ending up somewhere that is still  a couple of miles from the nearest shops is, as predicted coming back to bite them. The distance between the old house and the new place from the nearest town is about the same,  so although their current living situation is more suitable, they are now even more isolated in a sense. In their  village, at least they knew people, they had friends who would pop in from time to time, a church and a community, a post box to walk to, passing neighbours on the way. Now, even though there is a film club, a book club, coffee mornings, the odd outing etc on offer  it requires effort and time to establish new relationships, which is less easy the older you get. 

If you live in a town, even if you are pretty frail and wobbly it is much easier to get out for a pint of milk or a paper, or even to escape for a breather and to sit on a bench in the high street and watch the world go by. But after a nasty car accident (which luckily they have both recovered from ) they  no longer drive and their world is shrinking. This is a huge relief to the rest of us and to the Wiltshire public at large, but it has added another layer of difficulty and my father understandably feels as if he is a prisoner in his own flat. He spends most of his days sitting at his desk looking out on a lawn that is not his to mow. Shopping trips or collecting the dry cleaning and pensions need  to be planned, taxis have to be booked, life has lost any spontaneity, the only question mark hanging over each day is what’s on the menu for lunch. 

So many of my friends are seeing their elderly parents going through similar scenarios and I know I am not alone. It is extremely complicated trying to tiptoe  round an elderly  persons basic sense of independence by trying to help, because in many instances they  would rather be left alone. I can quite see that having a bossy daughter on the scene is about as welcome as a bucket of sick, but us grown up children are inevitably tasked with trying to sort out the inevitable muddles and confusion that go hand I hand with getting old , even though at times  it feels as if our roles have reversed and we have ourselves become the parents. And after all this is exactly as it should be because they are family, and family is more important than anything else. It’s not always easy, but it is what it is and we love them and owe them our best efforts because they have made us who we are . 

My fathers refusal to accept any help,  to the point of slamming the door on the carer we had organised, referring to her as “that woman” is sadly familiar to many others. Then again you have to admire his spirit in a way, though we are extremely lucky that the said that woman has the patience of a saint and takes it in her stride. At a recent meeting between us all as we discussed how best to proceed, with the aid of a spread sheet which is now stuck on the fridge , he sat on the sofa, eyes tightly shut, his hands clamped firmly over his ears like one of the three wise monkeys. 

If you ask me, the answer to all these problems  is to get together ands to form a kind of community with like minded souls, friends, colleagues, people who believe there is strength in numbers and that the way forward is to face old age together, while still maintaining your own independence and way of life. This way, people are not so isolated and can help each other because everyone is at the same stage ( in theory). I have a dear friend who is in the process of doing exactly this up north, having sold up and collectively bought  a farm with land and outbuildings which are now being converted into self contained and communal spaces, with provisions for carers and individual requirements. He described the planning meetings  as serious cards on the table sessions  but if there was ever a time to be honest then surely this is it. This kind of living situation wouldn’t suit everyone, but I could imagine this working for me and my tribe. 

I think the best comment on all of this came from a cheerful  and lively neighbour who I often bump into as I  visit. I saw her last week, dressed in a jaunty pair of orange tights with foxes on them ( which had been given to her, along with a new loo seat  by Father Christmas).  As we chatted about the weather and enquired after her general health  she said, ” you know, none of us really want to be here, so we might as well make the most of it”. 

My elderly stepmother had a fall and was taken to hospital on Christmas day. Once again I found myself speeding down towards Salisbury where once again I managed to park in exactly the same spot in the hospital car park, the lucky spot that means you can get into the entrance by nipping through the hedge rather than having to walk round the proper way. Simple things please simple minds. 

There is something bizarre and sad about hospitals at Christmas, with the swathes of tinsel and sagging  balloons failing to  cover up the peeling wallpaper and disinfectant,piped carols of the Cliff Richard variety,  inflatable, gently deflating  Santas  and the Christmas tree in the foyer with empty cardboard boxes wrapped as presents ( because people actually walk off with real ones..). Each bed in the ward I visited had stuffed monkeys in Christmas hats with long Velcro arms  swinging  from the curtain rails, though the elderly patients  barely noticed them. Every five minutes or so a thin sad looking Spanish man would  shuffle silently across to my stepmothers bed where he would stand looking into space, making a quiet tutting noise under his breath,  before a cheerful and patient nurse would appear and lead him tutting back to his ward, only to start all over again minutes later. His all seeing yet unseeing expression reminded me of when I woke up one night at boarding school to find EM , a girl a couple of years  below me standing at the end of my bed, pale as a ghost. She was sleepwalking even though her eyes were wide open and she seemed to be staring straight through me. 

Hospitals are strange worlds, where the  food arrives on trolleys and you get whatever the previous patient ordered for their lunch but checked out before eating it, where people come and go all night, its hot, airless, you lose sense of time, and this is even before you take into account the pain and disorientation and all that goes with being elderly and way out of your comfort zone. The nurses were heroic  and kind but over stretched, the paperwork never ending, the waiting bewildering and exhausting and we were very relieved that after a couple of days she was allowed home. 

We went to the lake district for New  year, to a village in the national park with fat squat cottages,  Christmas lights in the holly trees and plumes of woodsmoke bleeding into the slate grey sky. The sort of village where sheep escape into front gardens, everyone knows everyones business and where people take their boots off when they go into the pub, standing  about sipping pints in their socks  and the phone box has been turned into a book swap space.

The North lakes are exactly like Swallows and Amazons, books that fuelled my soul as a child, and though I was absolutely  convinced that I had spotted Wild cat island and houses that looked just like Holly Howe with its gardens leading down  to the water, with the faded obligatory boathouse, in fact I read that the books are based in the south, on lakes like Coniston. 

Everyone in the lake district is outdoors  mad, and indeed the best bit of the holiday was being outside, cheeks rosy from the cold and that sense of wellbeing that comes from walking in the fresh air and good company ( and knowing there will be a pub at the end). However we could not compete with the never ending display of lycra on display, the sticks and the boots, the breeches and snoods, gaiters and those plastic pouches you keep your maps in. Indeed every shop was full to the brim with everything you could ever wish for in the fell walking fashion wear department. Along with sheep mugs, those comedy kitchen aprons and whiskey flavoured Kendle mint cake ( take  immediately to the bin). 

I usually have a feeling of dread about New Year, too much  pressure to have a great time, when in fact you have eaten and drunk yourself into oblivion and all you want to do is lie on the sofa, or slope off to bed with your book,  though obviously  this is the behaviour of sad old people. But  though I am forced to concede I am indeed old ( but not sad) it seems that I am not alone in this guilty secret. We had a great evening, a quick drink in the sockless pub, a supper of ginger smoked ham followed by chocolate fondant ( whisked and frothed  with the aid of a balloon whisk attached to a Black and Decker drill) a few rounds of an appropriately annoying board game and we were all in bed by 12.30. And for the first time in years I woke up with a clear head and didnt  have to raid the medicine cabinet for aspirin. 

And on that rather self satisfied smug note I wish you love, joy, health  and happiness. I  hope that 2018 is the year us humans will come to our senses and start behaving like adults,  before its too late. 

Happy New Year 

If you put siblings in a room and ask them to remember a certain incident from their childhood,  you can bet your bottom dollar that each one of them will have a  different recollection of events. This indeed happened to dear friend who had a conversation with her brothers, all of them now adults,   about the time their parents announced they were getting divorced. All these years later, everyone had a vivid memory of how it happened, where they were, who said what, but interestingly each version was slightly different, even down to the exact year it happened. And every one of them was convinced that they remembered it as it actually was,  and that the others were mistaken. 

It’s difficult to distinguish fact from folklore,  sometimes because memories like stories, get handed down through families through the years and like Chinese whispers get embellished with a pinch of this and a pinch of that so that the end product is a soup of a story with many ingredients. 

I am completely convinced that while sleeping in a tent when I was about ten  I heard a lion roar. This is obviously complete nonsense because as far as I know the only lions in London are in the zoo, and not anywhere near Dulwich,  but there is a part of me that would still swear on my life that this really happened. I definitely do remember though the sinking feeling I would get in my stomach as the car approached the Vale of  Cherhill with its chalk white horse at the start of every term,  which meant we were only  ten minutes away , the holidays were over and we were back to the world of boarding school , itchy grey jumpers, freezing games pitches, lino corridors and the smell of disinfectant. I also vividly recall the day I learnt to whistle and when the fat boy fell into the fish farm tank when we were at lake Chuzenji. I would like to think my recollection of the round glass jar with the red lid that held toffees at my nursery school is real but I am not sure. Someone told me they could remember lying in their pram looking up at the patterns made by the leaves in the tree above them. I heard a man  on the radio the other day claiming he could remember being born,  but there may be a hefty pinch of salt involved and an amount of wishful thinking. Then again, who am I to say? 

Some people have difficulty remembering anything,  some remember less as they get older, for others it has always been so. For example T has always had trouble remembering things but has devised strategies  ( always putting things back in the same place, same order, writing things down) for every day life which is cunning but not foolproof. This is the man who made Jane Fonda a cup of tea and invited her into his projection suite for a jolly good chat,  because despite her being at the height of her fame,  he simply couldn’t  for the life of him remember  where he knew her from,  though he thought she looked vaguely familiar.

And then there are others like our old and much loved school friend who had a brain tumour and whose memory turned itself upside down and inside out in her last year of life. We would go and visit her in hospital and she was totally convinced we were all still at school, even though we were all in our thirties by then. She could recall events that we had long forgotten, the names of everyone’s guinea pigs, nicknames, things that happened on school trips ( like when we went to Longleat and our music teacher ate a bag of crisps with a knife and fork), who was in the swimming team, who had the best fancy dress costume at our 6th form party, the colour of my favourite coat, and so on. It was tragic yet funny, and extraordinary that the association her brain made on seeing us triggered all this detailed information that the rest of us hadn’t thought about for years.

Smells can evoke very strong memories. Patchouli oil ( which luckily I don’t come across that often these days) reminds me of being seventeen when we doused ourselves in it, while wearing our flared jeans with hand sewn inserts with Laura Ashley material , making them even more flared. The cold larder at my grandparents house had a particular smell that is difficult to describe,  cold probably sums it up, if cold can indeed be a smell. The study smelt of leather  and woodsmoke and the whole house had a faint air of what I now know to be damp, but then felt soft and warm and comforting. Ripe figs and coffee yoghurt remind me of heat and Israel and there is a particular type of beeswax polish that makes me think of my mums cottage in Wiltshire. My other grandad always had a tin of golden Virginia with apple peel mixed with it to keep it moist and that and the smell of creosote in his shed bring him back to me. When we head off to North Devon in August and I open up the back of my van for the first time there is a smell of holidays , of surf boards and cooking pots, fishing lines and buckets and spades, of damp ropes, waterproofs  and love. Our house smells of woodsmoke and toast, of hot coffee and family. And Hartland smells of rain, proper drippy drenching rain, soft damp peaty earth and wet waterproofs, sun cream and barbecued sausages, damp towels and freshly cut hay. 

Yesterday I came across a box of old photos, of holidays and small children, birthday parties, outings, evenings with friends, old pets and housemates, babies and school concerts. It reminded me of the car boot sale we went to a couple of weekends ago. One of the stalls had a pile of photograph albums crammed with family snaps that looked as if they were taken in the 50’s , each photo carefully stuck in place,with tissue paper in between each page, each labelled in spidery neat handwriting, ” Auntie Marge at Bexhill” and so on. The stall holder said he had found them in an old suitcase he had bought in a charity shop. There was something very sad about someone else’s memories and family history ending up in a box on a chilly Sunday morning to be rifled through by strangers.  I came home wondering what Auntie Marge would have had to say about it all. 

We spent the weekend in Rome, working at a party which was held in the Cinecitta Film studios, formerly the haunt of Fellini  and other renowned Italian film makers, still known as one of the most famous film studios in Europe. The event was held on the set of the HBO TV series Rome and looked every bit as authentic as the real thing, with villas and courtyards, just like ancient Rome, until you leant on a pillar and realised it was made of fibreglass. 

I am certain that Fellini would have never ventured anywhere near the hotel we had the misfortune to stay in. It’s highly possible that  at one time it was indeed a bustling family run establishment,  full of crew propping up the bar , seeing as it was literally around the corner from the studio. Unfortunately the only reason I could see for staying there this weekend was that it was there, though that also feels a little flimsy. As soon as the automatic doors opened,  you could smell the despair, mingled with cleaning fluid and cheap air freshner, the reception bar sticky and slightly chipped, the brash walnut veneer inside the lift smeared and greasy.

The bedrooms were similar to a waiting room in a funeral parlour,  and they had taken the  term ” mood lighting”to a new level by having the lampshades on upside down to enhance the general air of gloom. Then again, there are benefits to not being able to see too clearly at certain moments in life.  

Each room had three beds, probably because they were mostly broken and nobody could be bothered to lug them down the stairs to the skip, so by a process of elimination the chances were that one out of the three might be better than sleeping on the marble floor. The beds at least had sheets ( that smelt of stale tobacco, always a winner in my book) and one thin mean blanket.I am certain that either something had died under my bed,  or a travelling salesman had left in a hurry, leaving behind a large over ripe piece of cheese,  as something wasn’t right in the olfactory department. I was able to rectify this a bit by spraying  copious amounts of Jo Malone on to my scarf and wrapping it round my head which though effective,  didnt make for a good nights sleep as it felt a little like sleep by strangulation. 

Instead of towels,  they had provided what can only be described as tablecloths, possibly relics from when the hotel had a dining room. You can only applaud their dedication to re-cycling.  The bathrooms could I suppose be referred to as ” en suite” but that was more because they were actually in the next room,  rather than that any of the appliances actually  worked. Yes, we had hot water and the option to have hot water coming out of a shower, but unfortunately the fixed shower head was just not playing ball,  so that despite gymnastic attempts, the water ran down the back wall rather than over your body. 

Breakfast took things to a new level of culinary prowess. Previously we had eaten dinner in the restaurant next door, which to be fair and despite having the atmosphere of a neighbourhood housing office,  served delicious pizza, fresh pasta and great salads. However this did not extend to breakfast. This was plonked on to a tray and shoved through a serving hatch at us by dishevelled cook in a greasy shirt. This included a frightening assortment of pink meat, a curling sweaty sliver of processed cheese, one stale slice of bread, a day old pastry,  and a packet of radio active coloured fruit jam. All washed down with some foamy soapy coffee from a machine that had lost the will to live. 

The benefit of this  situation meant that, keen to escape, we were up very early and caught the tube into central Rome. There we joined the throngs of tourists at the Trevi fountain (astonishingly bonkers and must drive the neighbours mad ), saw breathtaking churches,the air thick with incense, street lights, carvings, shrines and tiny balconies, hidden courtyard gardens with  fountains and lemon trees visible through doorways, cloud like trees and tall thin poplars. We wandered up and down the cobbled streets, stopping for Espressos and piping hot toasted spinach and cheese sandwiches. 

It was a tiny glimpse, and  I plan  to return. To see the Vatican and the Colloseum, the track where they used to race their horses, the Medici villas, the markets and to walk along the river. The back street bits away from the crowds that you only find because you happen to walk down them. It felt very Italian with shouting and gesticulating, Vestas jostling amongst tiny Fiats, monks with shopping bags, and policemen in grey uniforms and jodhpurs, the smell of roasting chestnuts on every corner. 

Italy. Europe. A place I feel part of. And a place that I think we should stay part of. 

Arrivederci 

I was reading the Guardian article about Sean Hughes, the stand up comic/performer who died a week or so ago. While there may well have been some truth in it, and lets face it, none of us are perfect,  it was a pretty scathing and harsh piece, and indeed his fellow performers and friends who took the time to respond were in agreement that it was  below the belt. 

I’m not sure who it benefits, writing something like this about somebody who is unable to fight his corner because he is dead. Perhaps it made the author who seems to have been “dropped ” by Hughes,  feel better. But the very term” dropped” makes it sound like we are still at primary school with a petty ” she/he is my best friend, you are not” kind of mentality and he came across as being a bit of a whinger  with a distinct whiff of sour grapes. And does his comment that Hughes was ” mean with money”actually mean that he was pretty pissed off he didnt get left anything in his will? Who knows,  and I daresay we will never know. It just seems pretty shallow and downright mean, then again I must be pretty  shallow because I wondered if, as he said he was going to, he  did have the cheek indeed turn up at the funeral. 

Washing someone else’s dirty washing in public when they are not around to hang it out to dry seems pointless and mean spirited. 

On the other hand,  saying it how it is when people are still living can be much more revealing and can generate moments    of hideous yet rare genius ( like the car crash masterpiece that is Festen with probably what must rate as one of the worst family get togethers ever). 

My favourite story along these lines concerned one of T’s ex girlfriends. It was her fathers 65th birthday and they had arranged a get together  in a Rotary club in Battersea ( no doubt a block of luxury flats now).

 By all accounts her dad was a bit of a character ( think Minder/ Fools and horses), known for being generous of spirit and loved by many, though it was wise to stay on the right side of him, if you get my drift. A great big  bear of a man with hands the size bunches  of bananas,  builder by trade, with a cluster of construction sites and developments under his belt.He had invited guests  from every different  parts of his life,  from his bank manager to old business associates,  neighbours and school chums. As dinner came to and end his wife and children all stood up to make speeches and to toast him, followed by his oldest and dearest friends. Everyone clapped and cheered and then it was his turn. Looking around the room,  he thanked everyone for coming, thanked his family for their love and support through the years and congratulated his grandchildren for coming along early enough so that he had been given the chance to be a grandfather. As people dried their eyes and laughed,  he singled out some others for a special mention. 

To his bank manager sitting in the corner like the cat who got the cream he said,  “please put your hands together for Stan James, my bank manager from way back” and as people clapped,  he went on” , ” Stan, you must have thought you had been invited because I like you, well I don’t, you always were an unpleasant bastard , you  never helped me at all when I was starting out, you made my life a misery”, and then he introduced Harry Smart, his first business partner who was shifting in his seat looking rather nervous , “welcome, Harry, I know you took that deal behind  my back and then lied about it”,to  his old friend Frank,  ”  an old friend, quick to accept my money when you were in need, quick to accept this invitation,  but you couldnt  be bothered to come and visit me when I was in hospital for 6 months, or even ring to see if you could do anything to help my family ” and so it went on, as he continued to wipe the expectant smiles off the faces of those who had wronged him. And good foir him, better out than in I say. 



I guess the moral of this tale is to try and do our best while we are here, and to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Easy in theory,  but day to day struggles sometimes make this an impossible task. 

For example, this mornings trial, the woman in the Alitalia booking office. I had been trying to check six people in for a flight to Rome tomorrow but every time I got as far as the check in page it said there was a technical fault.  I then rang the same woman twice to ask if there was something wrong with the website. ” No” she said, it must be your computer” . So I spent an hour trying it again, went to T’s house to try his wifi, no luck, rang Virgin media, shouted at Lucas who was trying to help me. Finally I rang for a third  time and got a sensible man who confirmed that their website had been down all day

Finally managed to get throughout the right page  and went through the tedious  task of logging in everyone’s passport details etc, trying to be very careful not to make mistakes, and just as I was about to enter the last detail for the last person my session timed out and I had to start again. 

So  Mrs Alitalia booking office , if you should ever get an invite to my birthday party, I recommend you decline. 

This morning I went for a brisk walk around Burgess Park. It was like being in an episode of ‘the really wild show”. At the entrance by the bins there was a bit of a feeding frenzy going on. A feeding frenzy that at first glance I thought involved a family of squirrels ( funny how we think squirrels are quite sweet ) but then realised they were in fact three very large rats. At that moment a rather stout woman happened to be passing and when she saw the rats she threw her shopping bag into the air and screamed, then jumped right into the path of an oncoming cyclist, sending the poor man flying. Luckily he was unharmed but the woman was completely hysterical and having what Jane Austen would have described as an attack of the vapours. I helped her to one of the large tree trunks that line the old tarmac road where she  sat down and then I  gathered up her shopping which was scattered all over the ground. I left her to it and headed up towards the lake

Somebody had thrown pieces of bread across the scrubby grass by the playground and the crows were busily hopping about eating the crusts, their black feathers iridescent in the morning sunshine. It reminded me of the crow man, a strange and rather scary individual who, years ago, used to come to the park with bags of meat , carrying an extremely large and equally scary looking knife. He used to stand in the middle and call the crows. Then he would delve into his bag , pull out a piece of meat and proceed to cut it up into pieces and throw it to the cawing crowd. It was a little like a Tibetan sky burial with crows rather than vultures and mercifully, no dead bodies but I often wondered who he was, and why he carried such a large bag of meat.. perhaps he was butcher ( or a mass murderer?). 

The person I have always longed to bump into , and who I have on reliable  authority is not a fiction of someones fevered imagination is the duck man. He has a trolley ( of the sort kids play with in American films in their denim dungarees) and on the trolley are a pair of ducks. Yes, its true. He takes them to the lake where they jump off the trolley and jump into the water, while he sits down on a bench with a flask of coffee and a sandwich ( ok, I made that bit up). When they , or he , have had enough he calls them and they hop out, hop back on the trolley and off they go back to his flat. Sadly and despite many hours lingering hopefully by the lake I have yet to behold this wonderfully eccentric Camberwell phenomenon.

However,  the mouse man used to be a regular sight on Camberwell Green, viewed with fascination and horror in equal measure by passers by. On first  glance he just looked like a shabby old man, but on closer inspection , and if you watched him for a while you suddenly realised that bits of his clothing were moving. Suddenly a mouse would appear from under his shirt and scamper under his hat, followed by another, and another, much to the delight of small children and any passing cats.

When I was doing a job in St Petersburg we had an evening off to ourselves. It coincided with an event called the white night which was when it didnt get dark at all and on this particular evening all the bridges down the river were raised and all the boats passed through them hooting their horns and letting off bangers. I was standing watching this when I noticed a man next to me with a cat perched on its head. At first I thought it was a furry hat but it was definitely a cat. A performing cat. He then proceeded to do a whole routine which involved acrobatics with the cat balancing on one finger, on his foot, then throwing the cat into the air and the cat landing, holding his paws together in  a doughnut shape, as if he was on a hoopla stall at the fair. 

In a moment of madness I once bought a pygmy hedgehog as a present for my dear friend M. As is usally the case I didn’t do my homework before purchasing and it soon became apparant that Oscar as he was called was not going to be the perfect match for M’s household. Firstly, he hated noise . M has two perfectly normal and noisy children. Secondly he should never be kept in a household with a dog. Yes, you’ve guessed it. Anyway to cut a long story short we ended up being the owners of this sweet looking but deeply annoying creature. He didnt like being handled ( so out the window went all the FB photo opportunities of pygmy hedgehogs in hats and having baths) . Whenever you went near him he started to hiss, a bit like a boiling kettle. I spent a fortune at Pets at Home buying live meal worms and then even more of a fortune getting the inside of my car cleaned after a tub of these delightful meal worms tipped up and got down every crack and crevice in the back. In the end however, Pets at Home came to the rescue. A very nice man called John, who for reasons known only to the inner workings of Pets at Home was actually wearing a guinea pig outfit when he served me  enquired why I was buying meal worms. ” For my pygmy hedgehog” I explained. He clapped his ( guinea pig) hands together and exclaimed that he had ALWAYS wanted a pygmy hedgehog. Well, John it was your lucky day. Oscar was packed off and still lives to this day in Croydon, happily hissing by the stove. 

And I cannot finish this piece without mentioning the most famous and well loved character of our Camberwell years, sadly no longer with us. Dogman, yes, Dennis Dog, he of the shorts and the lard and the herd of unruly yapping dogs tangled together with baler  twine. 

Some of you may have read the piece and the ballad I wrote in his honour. I wonder what he would have had to say about the cafe that stands on his old doorstep. Where you can buy a crushed avocado sandwich for £6.50.

On Saturday morning,  we listened to a podcast, having (thanks to M and T ) finally discovered this rich and exciting medium that will transform our car journeys to and from the boat from now on. 

It was about a Japanese man who lived on the east coast of Japan, the bit that was destroyed in the tsunami, with countless family and neighbours lost, houses destroyed, whole villages and fishing and farming communities flattened, thousands still unaccounted for. 

Each nationality has its own stereotypes, we Brits hate complaining about substandard meals and love queuing, and the Japanese are known for their excruciating politeness, reserve and formality. And this is what made this story even more astonishing. 

It is impossible to imagine what it must be like to live through a disaster of this magnitude when your immediate world and all you hold dear is swallowed up by the sea. Familiar landmarks, trees, hedges, temples, school buildings, blocks of flats, car parks, shops, houses, farms, all gone. Families wiped off the face of the earth, leaving those who managed to survive with a lifetime of lonely wondering.

This man was a farmer and had lost his wife of many years. With no closure, no body, no grave, no headstone, no funeral service, and no answers,  he was frozen in a dreadful rigid grief.

So he did something very ordinary, but extraordinary.

He got hold of an old phone booth and put it at the bottom of his garden.

Over the next couple of weeks he got into the habit of going into the phone booth, and after dialling his home phone number began to talk to his dead wife. Gradually other people started to come to his garden and doing the same, calling  to their missing parents,husbands and wives,  brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, telling them  about mundane everyday things, like starting high school, buying new clothes, how the kids were doing, reassuring their loved ones that they were doing ok, how much they were missed, apologies for petty previous arguments and for not having said goodbye, worries that the disappeared would be cold or not be able to find their way home as home no longer existed. The very ordinariness of their conversations made it even more heartbreaking. 

One in particular was the fifteen year old boy whose father had been a long distance lorry driver, presumed drowned as he had never returned from a job that had taken him up the coast on the fateful day. One day this boy got on a bus and travelled for four hours from his home town and arrived at the phone booth in the garden where he picked up the phone and talked to his dad, telling him about the latest baseball game and how his studies were going. ” Keep warm” he said into the receiver before replacing it and heading off for the long journey home 

A month later he returned, this time bringing his mother and younger siblings with him. Giggling nervously, they huddled around the booth, each pushing the others to go in first. Gradually one by one they went in, lifted the receiver and dialled. His younger sister had never once mentioned her dead father since his disappearance. Hesitantly she approached the booth and as she picked up the receiver started to whisper and then to cry, the words bubbling out between the heaving sobs,  as for the first time she allowed herself to weep for her loss , telling her dad how she missed him. Her mother followed,  and it was almost as if she was talking to her husband around the kitchen table, that familiar, comforting family kind of chat that you have with your partner at the end of the day , when you are talking about nothing particular other than the latest gossip or the colour of the new sofa you want to buy. Afterwards, the whole family hugged, and cried together, something that they had not done before. 

The very idea, and the fact that someone can so easily allow themselves to slip into an imaginary world, to pretend  that they are actually speaking to a loved one, even though there is nobody on the other end of the line may seem strange,  but it is also incredibly beautiful and healing. And a license to say all the things that have been unspoken and buried through intense grief and pain. 

 From time to time after T died I would  ring our land line so I could hear his voice on the answering machine. And even  though I knew he would never hear it I would sometimes leave him a message just to tell him how we   were. 

Keep warm.