My thoughts have turned of late, excuse the impending pun, to mortality. I have taken to reading the Hatch, Match and Dispatch section in the Times – the Facebook of the over forties – and any number of people are said to have ‘died peacefully in their sleep’. Now logically I accept that the majority of them were very elderly and/or very ill but there must be exceptions. We all retire to bed at night and for all we know that could be it. Food for thought readers.

Anyway this has prompted me to buy (Too cruel to keep you waiting until next week but being me I am of course tempted to turn this into a money-spinning competition) a grave! Actually I’ve bought two because my long experience tells me that given enough time it ALWAYS pays to have a spare of everything, with the possible exception of a life threatening illness. Today’s top tip.

Coming from a long line of very organised worriers my family did own a number of plots next to a beautiful Norman church in deepest Sussex but due to an unusually busy period during the late seventies these were all filled up bar one.

The midst of a bereavement is never the best time to commit details to memory and for reasons too complex to go into, when my mother died none of us could remember which of the plots were still vacant, so to speak. There were headstones marking the actual spot, headstones in remembrance of ashes scattered elsewhere and in one case two headstones for the same person on different plots. Faced with having to pop her in with someone she had never really liked, most of the above, we were forced to buy yet another one.

When I went to get my own finally resting place sorted Mrs Kindly from the Parish Council asked me who they were for. Obviously I had several preferred candidates but in the absence of a cast iron alibi I was reluctant to name names.
‘Put me down as having first refusal’ I replied. ‘You qualify for the residents rate’ she said and so I jolly well should. (I stopped myself from asking exactly how you could be non-resident in a grave. Just) You don’t get much more resident than a family who, according to the impeccable research done by my mother’s cousins wife, were there to greet that early illegal immigrant, William of Normandy when he landed not ten miles away. Was I not christened and confirmed in that very church, even sang in the choir and do my sisters not marry there, every time? Always in white.

So when the time comes to bid a teary farewell could somebody somewhere please make a note that I’m for 149? Thank you.

PS Job done so we popped into the local hostelry for a small sherry. My review of Salehurst Halt is available on Trip Advisor. They clearly failed to notice a senior restaurant reviewer was in their midst. Novice, novice mistake.

Spring has sprung and things, or rather people, are on the move. My friend and neighbour is relocating to ghastly Cobham, home of Chelsea Football Club’s training ground, thereby exchanging Desperate Housewives for Footballers’ Wives.  On the plus side she has sold her house to a real life celebrity – not, thank God, a Kardashian – but someone whose most  recent film was on at the local Odeon only weeks ago.

I can’t remember when the neighbourhood was last in such a tizzy, possibly  not since Brad and Angelina took their children to the local Pottery Cafe but in this instance I had a cast iron excuse to pop round with a bottle of Bolly and introduce myself which would have been slightly out of place at a kiddy painting party.

And what delightful people they are!  In a spirit of neighbourlyness I even offered to vet the guest list for their house warming party – so easy to invite quite the wrong types when you are new to an area – and to organise some staff for the evening which, thoroughly grounded as they are, they declined.

Big mistake.  Half the people I know, and that would be the male half, only ever accept invitations in the certain knowledge that their hosts’ home will be awash with nubile young teenage girls in very short black skirts plying them  with drinks.  It is almost unnecessary to provide food at all!  People were going to be seriously peeved.

The invitation stated that we should arrive from five o’clock. “That’s because he has to be up early for filming” we opined knowingly before wondering whether the dress code would be cocktail or tea dresses. Oh the social minefield to say nothing of the choice of gift.  I opted for an Oxfam allotment, a follow up to the goat that I gave everyone last year.

Prior to my arrival Useless the Younger went up and down the street about twenty times noting the names of the other guests, the price I had demanded for taking him with me.  Good sign – no cars outside.  Everyone had obviously arrived in a limo.

When I worked at ITN  I was constantly and irritatingly asked if I met lots of interesting people, such is the myth of glamour that surrounds anything to do with the telly.  The answer to which was, of course, a resounding no, never.  And so it proved with the so-called starry party goers.  Far from standing around being famous and handing out signed photographs, they were all just rendered speechless at the thought of being somewhere where we all knew each other – all too well – where you could park your car outside your house and it would still be there next day and where no-one is selling drugs on the street corner.  Round here they are probably delivered.  By Ocado.

This was a world previously unknown to them, the like of which they had only ever read about in scripts which never got made.  Best of all it proved a salutary lesson to Young Useless.   90% of famous people are small and dull and you don’t want to be one of them.  As for me I think I’ll be house hunting too.  Celebrities?  There goes the neighbourhood.

 

 

We Londoners are still dizzy with the excitement of the recent elections and I have yet to recover my composure after finding a message on my answerphone from Boris Johnson himself.  My dilemma is that although, like any right thinking person, I dislike almost all politicians and politics,  I consider it completely unacceptable NOT to vote, given what people through history have done to ensure that we can.

My life in politics got off to a bad start from which it has yet to recover when my mother developed a massive crush on Jo Grimond, then leader of the Liberal Party.  This resulted in my sister and I having to deliver thousands of electioneering leaflets on foot to remote homes in Southern England at an age when we had far, far better things to do than break our nails wrestling with reluctant letter boxes and fleeing rabid hell hounds.

Matters were not improved by my first political outing with ITN when I was sent south of the river (Surely some mistake?) to cover a by-election where a beardless youth called Peter Tatchell was standing.  He was in the middle of a battle with the media who had dared to suggest that he was gay.  When he arrived for the count wearing a glittery jacket and even more mascara than me I realised that my suspicions  about politicians not being altogether straight, on more than one level in this case, were all too correct.  I think history shows that he has somewhat changed his stance since those far off days.

On one General Election night a friend who had never directed anything more taxing than an interview with a Booker prize winner was ordered into the front line election trenches and found himself locked in an Outside Broadcast lorry with a very left wing crew; his own leaning being somewhat to the right of Nigel Farage.  Too tempting.  Hoping to enhance his miserable evening, although perhaps not in an entirely positive direction, I personally delivered a small hamper from Fortnums and a 10 by 8 glossy of Auntie Margaret, apparently signed by her own fair hand and thanking him for his constant support.  I hope it cheered them all up.

One of my more memorable elections was spent outside Number 10 with my legs firmly crossed and wondering why a female Prime Minister had failed to address the lack of women’s lavatories in the SW1 area.  Stumbling back to ITN as dawn rose (By cab, obviously) I was diverted from my dash to the comfort station and told to ‘Get into the Green Room and keep Cecil Parkinson happy’. And second prize?  Ever the consummate professional I spent the next few hours pouring wine down our throats and listening to his soppy liberal views.

For a politician he seemed to be a pleasant enough man so imagine my horror on returning to work after an extended holiday to discover that a sex scandal was raging about his hapless head.  I walked into the newsroom and one of the newscasters greeted me with a broad grin. ‘Didn’t you spend election night with Cecil Parkinson?’ he enquired. ‘Think yourself lucky you’re not pregnant too!’

‘But I am’ I replied.  Imagine his surprise.

There has been a lot of talk of late amongst the chattering classes about gender.  At the risk of going out on a limb I am female, always have been and have never even imagined going down market and becoming male.  If in these difficult times you are not totally sure about someone (He or she?  It?) there is an acid test which will solve the problem in a trice, beyond reasonable doubt as we say in law world.  Tell the person you have just got a new car and if the first question is ‘What colour?’ you are in the presence of a woman.

I have, unusually for me, done some research on the subject.  During 20 years of marriage we owned no less than 27 cars and so it’s a fact.  Men always ask something dull about the maker, the cost or the ‘engine capacity’ – nothing that I could reasonably be expected to know.

27 cars may sound a little excessive to the untrained ear, especially in a family where the main breadwinner was not a car salesman or a car thief but it was our own special way of saving the planet. I would never dream of taking my gas guzzling 4×4 just to pop out for lunch.  Nothing less than serious trips to the garden centre could justify such careless consumption of the world’s limited resources although I must confess that for me ‘off road’ only ever meant parking on the pavement.  When we spent long periods of time in Cornwall it would have been certain social death to be seen in such a vehicle, marking you out immediately as a tourist, almost certainly from London and possibly even a caravan tower and therefore not privy to all the advantages that are automatically bestowed on small cars with Free Kernow stickers, especially with regard to mildly illegal parking.  A convertible was always one of the fleet so that the children could enjoy fresh-ish air and commune with Mother Nature without Mother Kingston having to drag round Richmond Park with a buggy and flat shoes.  I continue to afford them those simple pleasures, mostly because they have failed to master the art of walking anywhere. So, do the maths people.  That is a minimum, minimum, of three cars.

Being green was also why my husband’s favourite car at any time (Number 4) tended to remain in the garage.  This would always be an extremely powerful sports car that he was incapable of driving and therefore had so much lead in the bodywork from constant repairs that it was a bio-hazard for any child to be within fifty paces, even if they didn’t risk a quick lick.  For a clever man he was extremely slow to realise that such cars are the vehicular equivalent to leather trousers and a medallion. One son did remark that Porsches hadn’t made it into the ‘Top Ten Cars chosen by Footballers’ (It had sunk to number eleven, even with them) and he actually thought that made it an acceptable choice. Doh!  So Number 5 would be something he could manage on a daily basis.  Like a Robin Reliant.

As to my latest vehicle it’s red, since you ask and for the boys, yes, it does have some sort of engine.  I must admit to the truth of a story that on being asked by a mechanic about my tyre pressure I shot him a withering look and replied haughtily ‘How would I know?  Cars like this come ready inflated’.

Happy motoring