Today

17 Nov 2022
Elf and safety: are child protection guidelines killing Santa’s appeal?

Santa Claus is coming to town. I know this because I recently spent an evening gift-wrapping empty boxes to decorate his grotto at an upcoming Christmas fair. With most of my grandchildren now in their teens, it’s been a while since I endured the grotto experience and I was interested to know how such a thing is managed in 2022. How does one navigate between overbearing safeguarding guidelines and the jaded palate of today’s pre-school sophisticate? Is it even worth the bother? Like anyone who volunteers for a role that will place them in the company of children, our Santa will undoubtedly have been subjected to a Disclosure and Barring Service background check. Paedophile predators may find it harder to get Santa gigs, but not impossible.

Elf and safety: are child protection guidelines killing Santa’s appeal?

Thursday

19 May 2022
The pernicious creep of Big Nanny

Waiting at a coach station recently, in the space of seven minutes I was cautioned three times by the disembodied voice of Big Nanny. No smoking or vaping was allowed. Cycling was prohibited. Pedestrians were directed to use only the designated crossings. I almost wished I’d opted to travel by rail, but then I remembered that Big Nanny rides on trains too. In a quieter era of rail travel the only announcements, apart from service cancellations, used to be the one about refraining from urination when the train was in the station, and advice not to poke your head out of the window of a moving carriage. Which some dimwits nevertheless did with tragic consequences and so removed themselves from the gene pool. Now, though, Train Nanny never shuts up.

The pernicious creep of Big Nanny

Thursday

3 Mar 2022
The untimely death of the landline

I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I know who still have a landline telephone, and I am not among them. Getting one installed in my new home is feasible but why, my children ask, would I bother? I have a mobile phone, albeit a very basic one, and what more can a person need? To anyone under the age of 50, retaining a landline seems like a fogey-ish affectation. Indeed, one of my daughters has a rotary-dial handset, not as a back-up phone but as an ironic décor item. Because if you’re wearing a belt, why have braces? For mobile users there’s the back-up possibility of something called a cloud. Otherwise, nothing. You entrust your appointment diary, address book and photo collection to one device: your mobile phone.

The untimely death of the landline

Friday

28 Jan 2022

Thursday

27 Jan 2022
The difficult decisions that come with downsizing

I’m perched on the bed reading an old Mothering Sunday card. It’s just one item in a box of miscellanea that I must sort and prune and I really can’t afford the time to linger. That box contains a fraction of what I have to deal with before I move house and I need to crack on. But I am sweating the small stuff. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. One of the legacies of lockdown has been a longing for more space. Across the UK, families with children are falling over themselves to find bigger places. It’s a downsizers’ market right now for those of us who feel ready to let go and to set about the sorting and binning of things. It’s good for us, they say. It’s liberating, they say. My home-moving history is not an unusual one.

The difficult decisions that come with downsizing

Thursday

20 Jan 2022
Why cash is still king to me

I recently set out on a simple mission: to break the £10 note in my purse so I’d have a five to put in the church collection plate on Sunday. My first attempt backfired. The café, where my order was delivered with an eye-roll of metro disdain, no longer accepted cash payments. I sat at one of their pavement tables, drinking the single macchiato I’d neither wanted nor needed, and considered my next move. I’m aware that cash is now regarded as a grubby anachronism. All those hands it passes through! Eww! Of the two churches I attend, one has stayed ahead of this trend and installed payment terminals in the nave: tap and give. I can offer no rational objection to this. I simply don’t like it. It doesn’t feel like giving, just as in shops tapping doesn’t feel like actual spending.

Why cash is still king to me

Saturday

8 May 2021

Thursday

6 May 2021
What should we put in our time capsule of the plague year?

The ladies of my church knitting circle (note, we are open to those who identify ‘-otherly’, and to practitioners of diverse crafts) are an enterprising bunch, and no techno slouches either. Unbowed by Covid, we have continued to meet via Zoom, bringing along our own tea, cake and creative endeavours. We love a project, and we now have one: a time capsule of the plague year. This idea is so far proving to be more a feasibility study than a done deal. There are so many decisions to make. What size should the capsule be? Where will it be stored? When will it be reopened, and by whom? And what will they find when they do? A ruling on the size of the container is still at committee stage, though I believe it’s unlikely to be large enough to accommodate that icon of First Lockdown Madness: a toilet roll.

What should we put in our time capsule of the plague year?

Thursday

4 Feb 2021
The power of cold showers

Hippocrates prescribed it to allay lassitude, James Bond favoured it as a token of his manliness, and in less indulgent times Gordonstoun school insisted on it: the cold shower. And now it’s having a moment with the wellness brigade. (The very word ‘wellness’ used to send me screaming from the room: a Californian import, I was sure. Then someone pointed out that the word has been in the English lexicon since the 17th century, so that told me.) The proven physical benefits of exposure to cold water are impressive. A boost to the immune system, improved circulation, and a wake-up call to the body’s brown fat, which is apparently A Very Good Thing. But what piqued my interest were reports of psychological benefits: reduced procrastination and avoidance of unpleasant tasks.

The power of cold showers

Thursday

26 Nov 2020
The infantilism of Advent calendars for grown-ups

Long ago and far away, small children used to arm-wrestle their siblings for the privilege of opening a door in a cardboard Advent calendar. It was reward enough to find a picture of an angel or an awestruck donkey. How quaint that now seems. Because then Cadbury saw an opportunity and launched an alternative calendar, with little chocolate inducements. I mean, which would you choose, the donkey or a chocolate button? It was a no-brainer. Childhood, which used to end around the time you were tall enough to reach a clocking-in machine, now drifts on and on. Grown men forget to leave home, women in their fifties buy colouring books, and we are all exhorted to cosset our inner infant. Treat yourself. Go on, you know you deserve it.

The infantilism of Advent calendars for grown-ups

Thursday

17 Sep 2020

Thursday

4 Jun 2020
A death, live-streamed: my husband’s Skype funeral

When my husband died last month, I was as prepared as a person can be. Howard had been afflicted for many years by early-onset dementia and that, as we all know, is a one-way street. What I was totally unprepared for was the lockdown factor. Could we even have a funeral? Yes, we could, as long as we adhered to some rules. And would I like the ceremony live-streamed to those unable to attend? Well yes, I suppose I would. The offer of live-streaming solved my biggest problem. Howard was an American who had lived for many years in Europe. He had family and friends who couldn’t possibly travel to be with us in person. But all they needed was a Skype account and they’d be able to witness and feel part of the whole 20-minute, socially distanced ceremony.

A death, live-streamed: my husband’s Skype funeral

Monday

13 Apr 2020
Why are so many of my elderly friends in denial about death?

Here’s a cheerful thought: we are all going to die. Some of my friends are under 70 but most, now I come to count them, are not. We have had our Biblical allocation of three score years and ten and then some. So imagine my surprise to discover how unprepared many of my senior crowd are for death. Last Will and Testament not signed, sock drawer not tidied, unfulfilled ambitions regretfully piled up and, frankly, panic. This is not to minimise the horrors of a coronavirus death. It is, by all accounts, a struggle, literally, to the last breath. But even in healthier times our end days are likely to be attended by distress and indignities. It’s granted to very few of us to fall peacefully and permanently asleep in an armchair after a good lunch with our loved ones.

Why are so many of my elderly friends in denial about death?

Thursday

9 Jan 2020
In defence of pocket money

Our grandchildren are penniless. They have pretty much everything their hearts desire and they have parents with wallets full of plastic, but they lack the satisfying chink of coins in a jam jar. I was alerted to this state of affairs when one of our tribe turned nine and I asked his mother how much pocket money he was getting. The answer was: nothing. The very words ‘pocket money’ seemed to strike her as quaint. I said: ‘But what if he wants to walk down to the shops to buy a comic?’ The answer was that such a thing was very unlikely to occur to him but, if it did, she would drive him to the shop and pay for the comic. There, in a nutshell, were two worrying trends. If his mother always pays for everything, what possible chance does he have to understand money? And if he never walks to the corner shop without a hovering adult, when is he going to learn to deal with traffic, cruising pervs and big boys intent on robbing him? My interest was piqued.

In defence of pocket money

Thursday

3 Oct 2019
Young recycling zealots are talking rubbish

Church attendances may be falling, but there’s a new religion in town: recycling. Its followers are devout and full of missionary zeal. They follow the collection day rubrics to the letter and if you ask them what evidence they have that sorting their polyethylenes from their PVCs is any more effective than lighting a penny candle, they say: ‘But I believe.’ The road to a greener future seems paved with rinsed yoghurt pots that no one knows what to do with and I grow weary of being guilted, particularly by people who only recently learned to tie their own shoelaces. A couple of months ago I ran the gauntlet of a junior school ‘save our planet’ demo. I’d have liked to stop and talk to them about my alleged role in destroying the oceans, but I haven’t been DBS vetted so I thought it best not to linger.

Thursday

20 Jun 2019
Outside the box

In the summer of 1999 I did something radical. Spurred on by my husband’s universal loathing of television I took our TV set to the landfill and I haven’t owned one since. Twenty unrepentant years without the demon box, and alive to tell the tale. My family long ago accepted this stubborn eccentricity. They’ve grown used to the silence, the missing screen, the brutal fact that they won’t be able to watch the final of Strictly round at my place. A few friends have taken a different line, still hoping to sell me the benefits of owning a TV, particularly since my husband moved to a nursing home and I live alone. ‘It must get lonely,’ they say. ‘Get a cat, get a goldfish, get a telly.’ Other people’s reactions to this decision — I hesitate to use the words ‘lifestyle choice’ because I don’t really have a lifestyle, so let’s just call it a decision — have been at least as entertaining as anything I might have watched had I kept the beast.

Outside the box