All of us have at some point told a lie. Lies vary in degrees of awfulness from the truly despicable ( cheating on  your partner or  the Donald Trump variety), the inevitable ( saying you really like someone’s new boyfriend when in fact you think he is awful), and the pointless ( like lying about your age on a dating website ). And then there is the fib which always sounds like a word fromThe Beano, and pretends to be as harmless as toast and jam by the fire.

The first lie I remember telling concerned a jar of biscuits at my friend Helens  house. If Helen Haines you are reading this, I am finally, 50 years later coming clean. It was me who ate that custard cream. And shamefully I lied to your mum and said it was you. If it makes you feel any better,  for days afterwards   I imagined that the police would soon be knocking on my door and hauling me off to prison. A lesson in how awful it is to have a guilty conscience.There was another incident around that time and one that I am not proud of. It involved the bin lorry  and my brothers brand new bike. I did not have a brand new bike. I had a really shit bike with solid wheels and wonky brakes. It was pure  coincidence that this new bike was left in the road exactly at the time as the bin lorry which then reversed over it. 

We used to have a friend, a wonderful friend, who despite her loveliness was simply unable to tell the truth, and to give her credit would argue until the cows came home about the authenticity of each ridiculous untruth that came to her so easily. An example was a bowl she gave me, a very nice  bowl but she presented it with a flourish and said that she had made it with her own fair hands. When I pointed out that it actually had a stamp on the bottom saying ” Made in China” she told me that she had manufactured her own personal stamp and had indeed printed it on the bowl herself.

We are all guilty of the usual ” I’m just around the corner” when in fact we have only just got out of bed because we completely forgot, or that  “sitting in traffic” means that we actually left so late there is no hope in hell of arriving anytime soon. These lies are pretty harmless as are ” I’ve left my wallet behind” though this one is just plain irritating.

A fine example  of the common fib are the genius untruths uttered by small children. I came into the sitting room one day to find Molly  who was about four sitting on the floor with what can only be described as a comedy haircut. At her feet was a pile of blonde hair. On the sofa armed with a pair of nail scissors looking very pleased with himself was  Lucas. I asked him what on earth he had been doing. “It wasn’t me” he said. “It was the scissors”. 

The most embarrassing lie I ever told involved Lucas’s absence from school. Well it was embarrassing because I got caught out. In a spectacular fashion.

 It was Glastonbury weekend and I sent in a note to his teacher saying that he was most unwell and would be absent for a couple of days. In fact he was nothing of the sort and went off frolicking in the mud with the rest of the family. When he finally appeared back at school the following Tuesday his teacher asked him if he was feeling better,  and as instructed by me he said he was still feeling a bit rough but ok. At which his teacher said ” Sorry to hear that you were too ill to go to school, but were well enough to go to Glastonbury as all the teachers saw you on the telly dancing onstage with Iggy Pop”. CRINGE. I did then search the internet for footage and sure enough, there he was larger than life, dancing away with his unmistakable big curly hair. “Why on earth did you get onstage with Iggy Pop?” I asked. “Because he asked me” he replied. 

Fair enough. 

Our Japanese friends thought of Tim as the ultimate English gentleman. This was basically because he was very tall, went to Cambridge, spoke perfect Japanese, but most of all because he had worked at Harrods. He had in fact worked there for a short time as a summer job and used to sit in a  green Harrods van as it drove around Surrey delivering over priced  goodies to houses that had the James Bond theme tune on their doorbells. There is I’m afraid,  a very unsavoury aspect to this story so you may wish to close your eyes and skip the next two sentences. Each lunchtime the Harrods driver would stop the van and they would have their sandwiches. Afterwards, regular as clockwork he  would hop into the back of the van and have a poo in a paper bag while Tim sat there twiddling his thumbs. And this is absolutely true. Obviously not wishing to burst his celebrity bubble he didnt share this snippet while abroad

When we were living in Tokyo we did as everyone did, we taught English. With varying degrees of success. Many  of our private students became life long friends. Others were plain weird and a little sad. Once a week I would go to a very expensive hotel bar for an hour to meet a strange humourless gentleman who basically wanted to know how to make “English  small talk” and asked me questions like what does the Queen like to talk about..how the hell shoud I know? Anyway, the perk of this one was it was very well paid, plus I got to drink gin and tonic while discussing varieties of roses and how pretty Oxford street looked in the rain. There was also a dentist who was convinced my parents must have disowned me for disagreeing with his opinion that women were only put on this earth to sweep floors. We would forever be going to the station to meet prospective students who without fail would say things like ” Ok, I will be waiting for you . I am wearing  black shorts,a  black shirt, have black hair”.. easy to spot then. Our favourite was M’s telephone student. Every Wednesday at an appointed hour he would call for his phone lesson. A good plan, except that M always forgot and was often out, so it resulted in whichever one of us happened to pick up the phone taking the lesson and pretending we were her. This worked quite swimmingly for a while,  though I think he finally smelt a rat when Tim answered the phone, and despite getting through the lesson was questioned as to why his voice had become so deep. ” I have a cold ” he said and put  the phone down. 

My absolute favourites were my sewing machine factory boys. Every week I would get a train out to the suburbs and spend a jolly two hours with them. They were a delight, very funny, sweet and desperate to learn. We had work books that we used to do exercises etc but I soon decided that it was much more fun to make things up for them to do. The highlight was the map I drew for them of Camberwell. From then on each lesson became an exercise in being able to follow directions, to know what shops sold what and how to ask for things, where to buy stamps, where you can take the baby for a walk,go for a swim,  is there anywhere to get a cup of tea  near Denmark Hill ?, that sort of thing. They absolutely loved it. I do hope that if of any of them ever found their way to this neck of the woods they would still be able to navigate themselves to the Hermits Cave, stopping off on the way for a kebab and to feed the ducks in the park. Once a month or so we would go out for an evening of typical English entertainment. Yes, you guessed it, the pub. With the inevitable karaoke and a lot of shouting of the best English variety

My other lovely pupils were a gaggle of very naughty and cheeky six year olds who were such fun to teach,  even though I dont think many of them had the slightest idea  what I was talking about. We had to do nursery rhymes from the workbooks and I remember they particularly loved Twinkle twinkle little star,  but perhaps they particularly liked it because I used to let them stand on their chairs and wave their arms about,  as their teacher stood there blinking politely trying to hide her panicked expression. At the end of the last term I let slip that in fact I was in fact also a performer and we ended up having a riotous afternoon with the three of us doing our show in front of the school. They will all be adults now and I wonder if any of them remember their first foray into the English language

Happy days indeed. I don’t  think I have ever laughed as much as we did in our time in Tokyo. There is more,  but that’s for another day.

Say0!! 


Once we had managed to escape from the clutches of British Embassy life we went to look at a house to rent in a suburb of Tokyo called Nakano. The interview with the current tenant who was wishing to sublet the property to us was quite interesting to say the least. He was a Frenchman in around his 40’s with a French girlfriend. So far so good.It was only when he pointed out that the low table in the sitting room was ” a good height for tying people to” that we started to feel a little uncomfortable. He seemed to have a bit of a harem of young Scandinavian blondes who travelled around Japan with him, perhaps he was part of some kind of weird foreigner sex cult , we never found out. Every now and then they would re appear for a night or so and as we were drinking our morning tea the girlfriend would be handing out contraceptives to the blonde girls as if they were sweets. And one day a friend who had been staying with us and returned home saw  an advert in the small ads in a local Paris newspaper ( it had our address on it which he recognised). It was an advert for ” adventurous  women who desire Eros to be their master who are into water sports”. You can imagine that the day a letter arrived through our door in response it fell open in our hands. It was from a married woman in the suburbs of Paris who seemed to spend her time at work answering such adverts and signed herself as ” the kitten”. I wonder where he is now. Or indeed whether the kitten ever found what or who she was looking for.

Anyway, the house was in a great place, 10 mins walk from the station and  seemed like a good deal so we moved in. 

Right outside our house was a porn magazine vending machine. This seems very odd to us in London, who would never for a moment put up with such a thing, but in Japan you can get pretty much anything you desire to buy, without having to have any kind of human interaction. The porn magazines were the size of large telephone directories and as a consequence made a loud thud as they dropped  into the hands of their eager recipients. I’m sure word soon got round that using this particular machine had its own risks. At any given time during the transaction, (usually at the ‘thud’) our front door would fly open and we would dash outside to watch the embarrassed shopper bowing and scraping in horror at the sight of two foreign women laughing  as he scurried off down the street.

We also had cockroaches. Not cockroaches like you sometimes get here. Cockroaches the size of small mice who, horror beyond horror sometimes flew in the air with a disgusting whirring of wings. I used to have a complete phobia of them, to the point that if I was first home in the evening and first to turn the lights on there would often be a scuttle and a flash of brown as the repulsive creatures bolted for a dark corner. At this point I would turn round, leave a note on the front door and retire to the bar that was conveniently situated next door ( next to the porn vending machine). They had all sorts of cunning potions and poisons to get rid  of these monsters ,  but the weirdest was cockroach houses you could buy in the supermarket.  They came in a sort of miniature Ikea style flat pack decorated with  windows, a front door,  window boxes and curtains. They even had drawings of cheery looking cockroaches on the sides, for some reason they were wearing beach clothes and sitting in deck chairs. The deal was that you placed sticky delicious gum on the floor inside and then while the cockroaches were hopping about ( on the beach) they would pop inside, get stuck and eventually die a slow and gruesome death. 

Nakano was a fun place to live. In those days there was still a bath house at the end of the road and we used to go down there a couple of times a week. I imagine it is no longer there. Japanese bath houses are not for the  modest. Everyone goes from Grannies to babies ( who often used to arrive carried in washing up bowls.) and its a bit like being in a busy market with no clothes on, full of gossiping and much laughter ( especially when we turned up). Custom dictates that you must never ever even dream of washing inside the bath so all ablutions take place  in the shower area , where everyone scrubs and  shampoos before rinsing off and then climbs  into the large steaming communal bath, often filled with iris leaves or special minerals. Tim was exiled to the men’s bath house where he scrubbed and shaved alongside intricately tattooed Yakuza with their tightly permed hair and strangely feminine slip on shoes ( like those  clicky  plastic barbie high heels you used to be able to buy in Woolworths)

There were various bars that we used to frequent on a regular basis. Our favourite was the one where Monkey  boy  and his chums  worked and where they had songs like ‘Jingle bells’ on the karaoke machine. We loved karaoke. Despite several attempts it has never had quite the same allure in London, without the drunken shouting of red faced Japanese businessmen waving their Lucky seven cigarettes around in the air as they struggle through terrible renditions of Elvis. One night after an excess of Shochu ( Japanese vodka) and karaoke we staggered home. Once there we realised that Tim was not with us. He eventually appeared having mistaken a  house down the road for ours. Despite the fact that the fence in front of the house had a perfectly good gate he chose to climb over it and then as he didnt seem to have a key attempted to climb in through the bathroom window. Half way through and unable to get any further he decided to have a little sleep. Luckily at some point he woke up and came to his senses, realised it was not in fact the bathroom window to our house and got himself home. It is difficult to describe the outcome if the poor unsuspecting inhabitants had woken to find a large fair haired 6ft 2″ foreigner snoring halfway through their window, but it would definitely have made the local newspaper.

I cant imagine what Nakano is like all these years later.I’m sure the little shops and stalls down by the bath house have been replaced by  supermarkets and internet cafes. I have a feeling that somebody once told us that our old house is now a block of flats. One day I would like to think we will go back and see for ourselves. 

When I was driving  through the Arizona desert on my own,  I was desperate for something to listen to other than the local radio (which seemed to be either country and western or fire and brimstone religion) ,  so I stopped at a petrol station in the hopes of finding some cd’s. Though I did find the best guacamole I have ever eaten,  served with beautiful beetroot purple tortillas, the cd selection was rather limited. The only band I had heard of was the Pet shop boys, so I left clutching a copy of their greatest hits. This became my companion for the next week,  to the point that I was word perfect and so heartily sick of it that I left it in the glove compartment of the hire car when I delivered it back to the airport at Phoenix. The other day I was driving down to the west country and one of the tracks came on. I was immediately transported back to that extraordinary journey  with the big skies and dust red roads. I remember arriving at a motel after hours of solitary driving  and suddenly wishing I was back at home. I missed the kids and friends, wanted  a proper cup of tea, to buy a sandwich small enough to avoid  having to dislocate my jaw like a python in order to be able it eat it, when I suddenly realised that I could actually get the Archers Omnibus on my Ipad. This may seem very trivial to those of you who have not succumbed to the delights of Ambridge,  but to me it was like having an unexpected and very exciting Christmas present. It made me think of home, a bit like Mole in Wind in the Willows when he realises he is near his burrow ( or molehill?). And it’s interesting what reminds us of the comforts of home and reassures us when we are far way. 

Obviously, there’s food. Particularly  when you are in  the States and surrounded by menus and varieties and dietary options as long as the yellow brick road, to the point that actually all you want is a bit of toast and and a cup of Earl Grey, with nothing whatsoever on the side thanks. In Japan  we craved salt and vinegar crisps and marmite ( we made do with vegemite but it wasn’t quite  the same). One day our dearest Camberwell neighbours came for a holiday. they rang asking if there was anything we wanted from London. Literally at that moment I was thinking about Cadburys cream eggs. Not that I even like them that much,  but you know how it is. Anyway,  they arrived bringing with them one of those large wholesale boxe containing 36 of them. Slightly melted and slightly sticky silver foil wrapping and a treat for all our students. And funnily enough wheneve I think of a cream egg now, I think of Tokyo rather than home. Travelling through Tibet when there actually wasn’t very much to eat became  a bit of a food fantasy trip,  and it got to the point where I would have sold my soul to the devil in exchange for a plate of pasta or an avocado. Drinking a bowl of frothy, slightly fermented yaks milk complete with additional bristly hairs,  while trying to convince yourself it is actually a frothy cup of freshly ground coffee is a good way to sharpen the mind, though in my case never very succesful

Another thing that reminded us of home when we were living in Japan was the TV. Or at least our yearning to be able to watch something in English. Japanese TV was endlessly terrible. Really terrible. Mostly consisting of game shows with over acting irritating  hosts who shouted and squealed as if they were hyperventilating on helium. And some of the games seemed to specialise in humiliating the contestants,  which obviously is terribly terribly funny. Their version of Candid Camera took things to another level. There was one sketch where they dug a person shaped hole in the road ( like when forensics draw around a dead body ) and then a man painted to look like tarmac fitted himself into the hole and lay there so that it looked like a proper road . Then unsuspecting people would cycle past,  at which point the tarmac man would jump up causing  the poor cyclist to shriek, fall off their bikes and land with a thump on the road, sometimes really hurting themselves. Ha ha I hear you cry. Another was a scene in a massage parlour. Someone who had obviously been living on a diet of baked beans was positioned with their bottom sticking in the air and a massage table was placed over them , with the opening where the face of the massage recipient would be,  placed directly over his bottom. Then a jolly  unsuspecting victim would turn up for his massage, lie on the table on his stomach while the massage therapist starts kneading his back. Lo and behold the hiding flatulent gent underneath lets off his hideous bean filled gas right into his nose, bingo! 

 The only two programmes we could get in English were ‘The A Team and  Little house on the prairie’. Such was our excitement  that we would re schedule our lives to fit around this treat and would even rush home in order to catch up with the latest exploits of Mr T or the goody two shoes Ingles family. This might seem extraordinary now when you can usually watch something in English pretty much anywhere in the world. But things were much more limited and different then. My friend F  admits to having watched Songs of Praise while living in Australia as it reminded her of home.  I can guarantee that had this been on our  menu we would definitely have stayed in every Sunday evening to watch it. 

I first encountered dog man ( or Dennis Noble to use his real name) in around 1980.  We were sent out from college with our sketchbooks and I found myself sitting on a damp bench in St Giles’s churchyard  drawing lichen covered tombstones. 

I realised somebody was watching me and when I looked I up I saw a squat sturdy man with fierce curly hair, unruly beard, filthy shorts, socks and sandals. In his hands was a tangle of baler twine and leads, at the end of which danced and snarled a motley crew of dogs of different sizes, twisting in and out around his legs like an out of control maypole dance.

He sidled up to me and asked ” Do you want to know how I keep warm in winter?”and before I had time to answer  he announced that he rubbed lard all over his legs which kept the cold out ( and presumably the dirt, in). He continued to inform me that he currently only had twelve dogs although he used to have thirteen, but that one had been naughty so he punished it. Thankfully I never  got to the bottom of this. And so began my acquaintance with one of the most eccentric and  colourful inhabitants of South London.

Dogman became a familiar part of the scenery, muttering to himself as he hauled his unruly troupe of mongrels over to the green, or marched down our street, hunting through rubbish on the way, waiting outside for the supermarket to open so he could avail himself of treats from  the discounted trolley. Day in and and day out he always wore a pair of shorts. Bizarrely the only time I ever saw him in long trousers was when there was a heatwave and the rest of Camberwell sweltered and sweated.

There were various stories going around  as to how he came to be living in a four storey Georgian house just round the corner from the Grove with its Range rovers  and spacious gardens. The most credible was that he had inherited the house from his parents. He was also rumoured to have been a succesful photographer and lecturer in his day and there were certainly adverts and hand painted signs advertising  tripods and photographic equipment  ( and “clean air”) for sale posted all over the front of the house, along with piles of newspapers, cans, bottles and boarded up windows. For as long as we knew him he seemed to have no electricity, running water or gas and we used to wonder how he survived the long wet winters as we huddled in our badly heated and draughty house.

From time to time he would knock on our door trying to sell us things that he had found in skips and would usually bring his breakfast to eat with him. This would often be a slab of Anchor butter that he ate like a chocolate ice, alternating this delicacy with a sinewy black pudding, all washed down  with a pint of milk, the drips forming a crust on his grubby jumper. It was impossible to tell how old he was , as he must have been pretty fit, walking miles each day. He was also extremely articulate though in a rather insular way, unable to engage in a two way conversation, preferring to launch into a breathless monologue on any subject from Catholicism to how to peel an orange.

One day he invited us into his house for tea. We went, though I’m ashamed to say we did not last more than about five  minutes when it became apparant that tea was to be offered in empty dog food cans,  a thought so repulsive that we  made  our excuses and fled, hysterical with relief at having escaped botchelism or worse. 

We left Camberwell and went travelling for two years. At one  point we were snowed in high up in the Himalayas waiting for a break in the weather,  so that we could fly back to Kathmandu. With very little to do in the evenings apart from play cards and chat we learnt all about the lives of our fellow travellers, and they in turn heard tales of ours back in Camberwell. Lo and behold, a year later back at home, a campervan turned up in the street and out jumped a Canadian couple, last seen on a rickshaw in Nepal. They begged to be taken to visit dogman. We headed up towards the churchyard at the back of the house and suddenly there he was, respelendant in shocking pink vest carrying a pile of old bones. I can only hope that they were for the dogs dinner, not his.

Over the years he came and went, sometimes disappearing for weeks or months on end. Then out of nowhere a mass of hysterical yapping dogs would appear, followed by muttering and cursing and we knew he was back in town

And then one day he disappeared and never came back. Months went by , and then a year and then workmen came and boarded the house up. The front and back gardens were cleared of old mattresses and corrugated iron, the signs removed, brickwork cleaned, windows mended. The house was turned into a hostel with queues of men with pinched faces waiting outside for opening time.

I saw him once more, years later at a zebra crossing by Brockwell park. This time he only had two dogs at his feet, but was still wearing his shorts. I called out to him but he looked at me without a flicker of recognition in his eyes

And in the busy faceless whirl of this city where I still live, where faces come and go without comment, I wonder whether he even knew that we noticed he had gone. 

It was inevitable that sooner or later I would write an article about my chickens. How I love them, with their cheeky beaky faces and the way they  race towards me when I go  to feed them with that ridiculous John Wayne cartoon waddle. 

I have kept chickens for about six years now,  having been given four for my 50th birthday. The best birthday present in the world. Out of the originals, Peggy Troop ( named after the vicars wife), Eggbertha ( in memory of the legendary chicken lady), and Bouju Marley, only Mrs Barrington Black survives, a grand old lady with glossy black feathers and a bit of an attitude. If she were human she would be Maggie Smith, the old dowager  from Downton abbey. In addition to the originals I have added Henry Peanut  and Beyonce,  a beautiful grey blue text book Bluebell hen. Unfortunately last week she succumbed to the falling over disease that seems to afflict them in later years. Luckily I have the trusty been man round the corner who comes to despatch them when necessary. Though I should probably man up and do it myself but somehow I can’t bring myself to do the deed. So currently Peanut and Mrs Barrington black are in residence, happily pecking away at some spinach I have just picked for them.

My chickens are very spoilt. More than once I have been ridiculed for making them hot porridge on a cold Monday morning or  for putting a hot water bottle under their straw, when everything was frozen solid and they were moulting, so a little thin on feathers. I even bought them some ( hideous) peach coloured wool ponchos from a craft fair that were actually made for Barbie dolls. This is the craft fair that we go to every year while on holiday and sells the most delightful arts and crafts.So delightful that it is hard to imagine the thought process that goes on in the preceding months.  I mean who would seriously make  ( let alone buy) a crocheted cover for their upright hoover? Or fun fur covers for their car seat belts? Though the recycled envelopes made from old magazines are genius and I still have some in my drawer. Along with the 25 dream catchers of different sizes bought through the years by small children. 

When you go to the checkout the lovely ladies in charge laboriously write down each product in an exercise book and record which table they came from. I got to the front of the queue and we had a conversation about how we had come down from London etc . When they got to the four peach ponchos they mentioned that I must have a lot of Barbie dolls at home. ” Oh no” I said, “they are for my chickens”. At which point the woman in charge of putting things in bags went to the door behind her, opened it and shouted through to her friends who were busy making sandwiches and cream teas and shouted ” There’s a woman here who has just bought some ponchos for her chickens.In London chickens wear clothes”. Needless to say the ponchos were not a success, along with those tiny knitted hats that you used to be able to get with Innocent smoothie bottles.

The main enemy of every chicken and particularly a Camberwell chicken is foxes. Barely a week goes by without seeing one sloping down the street, hiding behind the parked cars  or rifling through the rubbish at the end of the road. I feel sorry for them as sometimes they have mange and injured legs, scabies and generally look totally miserable. Then again, keep away from my chickens thanks, stick to the bins round the back of KFC if you’d be so kind. We dug a trench round the chicken run when we built it and filled it with rubble and earth,  with double wire, so they are actually pretty safe when inside. But there have been several incidents, always when they were out pecking around in the garden, always when we were outside, always in broad daylight. The first concerned Mrs Barrington Black. A fox crept up behind her and grabbed her from behind. Much squawking ensued so that I ran out and threw a saucepan at it, fox ran away taking all of poor Mrs B-b’s feathers,  so that half of her was completely bald as if it was ready for the oven. Apart from this indignity and a couple of convalescent days in a box in the bath,  she was right as rain, though for a month or so she looked as if she had been given the worst possible comedy haircut. Another time a fox ran into the open run and chased Peggy Troop round and round it until I managed to intervene, Peggy escaped and I shut the fox inside the run with the four chickens hopping about outside. At this point Mrs Troop took a bit of a turn,  or to coin one of my favourite ever phrases had ” a funny five minutes” and fainted, out cold on the patio. After a couple of minutes she came to, shook herself and was perfectly fine. Meanwhile the fox was going completely berserk inside the run so in the end we just let him go and he disappeared into the allotments

I think I will always keep  chickens though it would be nice to live somewhere where they could be completely free range . There is nothing on earth is as delicious as a speckled freshly laid egg with soldiers and a cup of Earl Grey tea. 

And there is nothing on earth like the comforting  chirping  and peeping noise that they make as they root around for corn, a sound that can make even the most miserable morning feel as if is full of sunshine and that everything is actually alright with the world 

When I went out this morning to feed my chickens I heard  a woodpigeon  in the lime tree at the end of the garden. This sound always reminds me of Gypsy Furlong, the house where my grandparents,  and where we, for a brief time lived. 

Gypsy Furlong smelt of damp newspapers and woodsmoke, of beeswax polish, cooking apples and leather boots . A house full of creaking stairs, starched sheets and hot water bottles. The kitchen table I am sitting  at now came from there, scrubbed and bleached within an inch of its life each morning in my grandparents day by Muriel Tibble, sweet and smiley, hair in a plait wound round her head like a character from The Sound of Music. My brother and I loved Muriel,  or Lola as we called her, she had been with  the family since my father was a boy and she lived in a room up at the back of the house with a cabinet full of trinkets, toby jugs, tiny boxes encrusted with shells and postcards from the seaside. Every morning I would get up early, breath steaming in the cold kitchen and have a cup of tea with her as she busied herself lighting the fire and getting breakfast, before everyone else was about. This set a pattern for the rest of my life  as I am still an early riser and still need a cup of tea before anything else, delighting in the quiet, empty kitchen at the start of the day. I have a large silver fork in our cutlery drawer that Lola used to use instead of a whisk while making cakes and scones.  The prongs are  completely worn down at a perfect angle after years of being  beaten  against the side of the mixing bowl. In the  days when things were made to last, were mended and fixed, never discarded, the days of waste not want not. 

My fathers family had been born and bred into the village , starting off in the big house on the way up to the main road and then gradually uprooting and scattering so that we had relations in pretty much every village on the way to Marlborough. My particular favourites were the Aunts, Auntie Grumpie and Auntie Polly. They had moved a mile or so stroll across the water meadows as young women and had lived for the rest of their lives in a house with gardens leading down to the river, within sight of the tiny church where we were christened, with a Victorian cast iron bath in each of the bedrooms. It was rumoured that they had both lost sweethearts in the first world war. The aunts were famous for their home made strawberry ice cream and for their interesting ( and in our eyes very exciting) driving methods. I can’t remember which way round it was but one could hardly see and the other had terrible arthritis,  so between them they drove their old grey Wolesley car,  with one steering and the other changing  gear, sometimes on the right side of the road, often not.  Once a month on a Sunday the Wolseley would career up the drive at my boarding school, and me and a lucky friend ( there was a waiting list) would be collected by the aunts and driven back to their house for a slap up perfect roast lunch, followed by the aforementioned strawberry ice cream with a box of Black magic chocolates each  to take back with us. This marvellous arrangement came to an abrupt  end one summer. My parents were home on leave and the aunts came to tea. At the appointed hour the car careered up the drive, spitting gravel at each turn,  and instead of coming to a gentle halt,  crashed  with a sickening thud straight into a large stone urn full of geraniums outside the front door. When the aunts hopped out of the car to greet us it became apparent that they simply had not noticed the badly dented bumper or smashed headlights. From then on, much  to our disappointment my father banned us from ever getting into a car with them again and he made sure a taxi was sent to and from school to collect us. 

From time to time we would go and visit our other relations in the surrounding villages,  Uncle Billy who lived up the back lane, and had a Chinese cook who made us orange squash in a saucepan, which he served into glasses with an enormous silver ladle. Aunt Cicely who lived an enormous house full of gently chiming clocks and a greenhouse where she grew melons, and Robin and Eve. When ever I see one of those green mint Viscount biscuits  I am reminded of  outings with them, with scratchy picnic blankets and flasks of tea. And because of them I always put a splash of Lea and Perrins and a slice of ham under my scrambled eggs

There is nobody left now. They are long gone. Gypsy Furlong has been loved and lived in lived in by two other families since. But I can still remember the sound of the rooks as they noisily made their way home to roost on the larch lawn and the woodpigeons in the wisteria

Yesterday I drove back into London from West Sussex in what can only be described as a foggy whiteout. It was like sitting  in the car with all the windows and windscreen being covered in cotton wool , and a game of chance as to whether or not any of us would make it through the  invisible lanes,  without ending up in the ditch or in some unsuspecting  villagers sitting room. 

There is a point in this journey when Radio 4 gives up the ghost and I become reliant on local radio stations. These invariably turn out to be way more interesting anyway, at least for a short time. Yesterday the theme was world records. I bet a lot of money that you had no idea that the largest collection of sick bags ( empty I hope) is 5,568. And that Sooty the guinea pig  is a champion because he received 206 Valentine cards from all over the world.. and that Truffles another guinea pig from Fife holds the long jump crown  coming in at a hefty 48cms. This information was topped only by people managing to break ridiculous amounts of wooden loo seats, raw eggs and sitting room furniture over their heads and someone who managed to keep 8 snails crawling on his face for 10 seconds. I mean, why would you want to ?

When  we were living in Tokyo and doing circus shows  in the 80’s,  we used to go into international schools to perform for the kids. At one school in Yokohama we were particularly struck by the amazing artwork that was posted up all over the school hallways and classrooms. Really big, bold exciting stuff. While we were having tea in the staff room we were introduced to the art teacher, a fairly unassuming guy who I think was from Denmark. We got on famously. After we had finished and were clearing up he came over and gave me one of his postcards. If you can imagine the most extreme conversation stopper then this was it. It was a photograph of him, naked, suspended from a crane over a bustling street in Copenhagen and he was hanging from hooks sticking through the skin on his back and legs. I mean, why on earth would you want to multiplied by about a million times?. Although we had no idea at the time he is incredibly well known for his performance art and a while ago inserted electrodes into his arm  so that somebody else could control his movements.

However,  returning to the slightly less revolting world of bathing in cold baked beans and balancing chairs on your nose , I was interested to hear about some sherif in the States who holds  the record for having been struck by lightning a total of seven times. I think I saw  a TV programme about him,  but all I can remember is that he had a rather tragic resigned expression and seemed a bit bemused generally at his lot in life. Then again I imagine any fighting spirit had been zapped out of him by all that lightning. I had my own brush with lightning a couple of years ago. One summer, we had  couple of  very  heavy thunder storms. I was in the allotment when the sky started to darken and within minutes it was raining very hard. I knew that I had left the side windows open in my attic so I ran inside to shut them. As I put my left arm out to pull the window hinge inwards there was a large bang, a sort of whooshing feeling up my arm  and I was thrown backwards on to the floor. I then felt really sick,  a bit like that feeling when you mistakenly put your finger in a dodgy light fitting.

 Not something I wish to repeat at any point, though I was  famous in our street and the kids thought I was cool for a brief fleeting moment. At it was fun to imagine I had super powers for a day or so. 

What an extraordinary couple of days,  when it seems that the whole world has gone mad, but as is often the way, the worst of humanity also brings out the best, so that when you are on the point of giving up and walking into the sunset something happens to make you think actually it’s probably worth sticking around. In my case, this was the march on Saturday through London. A gloriously sunny crisp day, a gathering of  of like minded strident humans, small large, young old, male,  female, a melting pot of solidarity, pink hats, banners and wit. Some perfectly sensible friends did not march because they felt ” there is no point, marches and protests  do not make any difference”.. well I do not agree. While I admit to having felt incredibly deflated after the last massive march against the Iraq war, when we felt so optimistic and yet Blair did not listen, if everyone just assumed doing anything pro active was pointless where on earth would we be now? Marching with  thousands of others (with  my daughters at my side )  felt empowering and life affirming.  If this is not a good enough reason to feel optimistic about our future then I don’t know what is. 

Talking of walking off into the sunset, I remember a story I was told when I was staying in Arizona. The lovely couple who were putting me up had both been married before and on a drive up into the mountains the wife was telling me about her first husband. He had, she said been a ” walker”. I imagined this meant that he enjoyed hiking . But no, she meant that one day, in the middle of the night, he got up, left the house  and walked out into the desert where his body got taken over  by an alien. This was told with complete solemnity as if it was as normal as popping out to buy a pint of milk and a packet of fags. A pretty extreme way to get out of paying child support if you ask me. Anyway, he eventually got in touch about a year later having changed his name ( to Drogan) but still to this day, 20 or so years later  lives somewhere out in the desert in a community of fellow “walkers”. There is hope I suppose that perhaps Mr Trump may feel the need for a similar stroll, though I imagine even an alien would struggle to take him on.

In this time of Brexit and the bizarre and  quite frightening events of the past couple of days in the USA I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. Except I was proved wrong when during lunch yesterday M  brought up the delightfully charming subject of SCROTOX. Yes, you heard right. Apparantly a new fad for men of a certain age, injecting botox into their testicles to turn them from their natural wrinkled prune state into firm plums or boiled eggs ( I did not make that up). Disappointed though at the lack of photographic evidence on the internet,   apart from some rather tame pics of said firm plums and shiny eggs and one rather scary image of a large pair of testicles that seemed to have been polished with radioactive powder. Unbelievable what people seem to want to do with their bodies. 

Though I suppose some people might think that the amount of alcohol that was consumed over our roast beef was pretty unbelievable too. 

Nothing is what it seems in the strange world of internet dating. It’s the ultimate fantasy land  where,  if you choose to do so, you can  be whoever you  want, say whatever you want , and can create a whole new personality. Bizarrely,  a lot of people even bother to  lie about their ages on these websites, which seems a little pointless.  Surely this is setting yourself up to be rumbled at the very first meeting? 

I soon learnt while trawling through endless profiles that there were certain phrases that should be avoided at all costs. Claiming to be in possession of a good sense of humour is number one. You can guarantee that anyone who claims to be very funny pretty much isn’t. On any level. Again “wacky and crazy” in my experience usually meant deranged, but to be fair at least they tried to warn me. And listing a favourite occupation as ” an evening on the sofa with a nice bottle of wine” is in my view deeply suspect

Though at times the whole process was brutal and pretty soul destroying, it was also extremely funny. Particularly funny for my dear ( non single) friends who devoured every detail of my  latest dating car crash scenario with relish. And I’m sorry to say there were many car crashes of the multiple pile up variety. It got to the point where rather than have a long detailed profile ( detailing my good sense of humour etc) I compiled  a list of questions based on real gents I met,  updating  the questions when necessary.  This avoided many misunderstandings and the answers were intersting to say the least. This was all some years ago now but from the top of my head the questions  went something like this.

1. Do you have a toy train that you like to ride around your garden while wearing a drivers hat?

2. Is a detailed description of bathroom fittings and your collection of ties an interesting subject for a first ( or any) date?

3. Do you pretend to work for MI5?

4. Would you say that David Icke is sensible or insane?

5. Is a leather waistcoat ( without a shirt ), a leather hat, leather trousers with fringes down the side,  and cuban heels the ideal fashion item ?

6. Do you have a live in girlfriend/wife at home that you have forgotten about?

You would be surprised at how many  did in fact suffer from amnesia and did have partners. This seems unbelievable particularly as  most of them also had profile pictures which could so easily have identified them. Then again maybe this just spiced things up at home.

The man with the toy train..what was I thinking?  Similarly the David Icke fanatic who was full of conspiracy theories and vitriol against his ex wife. Or the spy who kept sending cryptic messages from “abroad” and lists of fantastic reasons as to why he was having to postpone our meetings. Then I found out that actually he was with his wife in Thames Ditton. Dear sweet Mr Leather  I think was simply on the wrong website at the wrong time. The most bizarre message I ever got was from someone who said he shoed horses and  spoke to the dead. I slightly regret not having taken this further. 

One of my all time favourites was Mr bathroom fittings/ tie collection. We met in a bar and I was impressed at his ability to speak almost without stopping , a bit like those Tibetan monks who can do circular breathing. On and on he went about bathrooms and ties as I gradually slipped into a coma. In the end I pretended my phone was ringing ( it wasn’t) and that one of the kids was ill ( they weren’t), made my excuses and left. All the way home on the bus he bombarded me with jolly messages. The next day I sent him a very friendly yet firm text saying how nice it was to have met him but that we weren’t particularly suited. I got a reply saying” Fantastic, lets set up a chorizo restaurant together”. Er, let’s not. And then the one who suggested we went for something to eat and then offered me a half eaten apple and a sip of lukewarm tea from his flask. 

It’s an interesting lesson in human nature all round,  because however you try and convince yourself that you aren’t in the least superficial and that looks don’t  matter.. OF COURSE THEY DO.. especially if all you have to go on at the very start is a photo. Then again you could make a great documentary based on what constitutes a good photograph,  or what makes people think is a good photo. Its a mystery to me as to why a seemingly normal grown  up art teacher thought that I would find the photo he sent of him holding his stomach in while standing  stark bollock naked in  a beige bathroom in anyway enticing. And the  endless photos of  action man posing next to his cars, boats and motorbikes, in the gym, on the beach, up mountains, on water skis, on hang gliders..blimey it’s exhausting. Then again, I’m sure women are just as bad ( or worse as David Icke man kept telling me) 

I guess at the end of the day most of us just want to be loved, to have someone to fight our corner and hold our hand in the dark. And yet this most simple of desires at some times felt impossible and lonely. But as a friend told me at the very beginning of the process, you just have to keep going and the right person will come along,  which in my case was good advice.  This whole internet dating experience was an extraordinary journey for me. I had a great deal of fun, some wonderful experiences, met some brilliant men, visited a huge amount of bars, laughed, wept, and  have made good friends for life. You know who you are and I thank you.