‘Life’ a wise man once said to me when I was a headstrong young woman, ‘will not be a fortnight of golden moments’.
This past week wasn’t even ten minutes of them. I was, as my mother would have said, overtired and silly following several days of burning the birthday candles at both ends. Both the weather and I were humid and overcast/hung. Living with the detritus created by two adult sons was getting on my nerves (Yes, even I, hardly Mrs Beeton, was beginning to notice the chaos they left throughout the house). And then I had an exceptionally tough time at my day job when I had to deal with three cases, all of them the most unspeakable crimes, one of which left me in tears.
Most of us reading this live in a very sheltered bubble compared to many other people which makes it even more gut wrenching when you come face to face with very, very real life.
Enter the youngest son whose particular talent since he was tiny has been to give incredibly good advice, which I have, on occasion, taken.
‘Talk to someone’ he said. And a list, please, of people who would chose to listen to this? ‘Friends’ he said. ‘That’s what they’re for’. So I did and goodness me they were wonderful.
I was with one particular chum who has worked in nursing all her life and she was describing how she dealt with the feelings you’re left with after terrible situations. Her phone rang and it was a 95 year old lady who used to be one of our clients when we were involved in cooking lunches for the elderly. No doubt many of you remember the anarchy that was Gravygate. This lady had walked a mile to her doctors in the heat and been kept waiting for an hour and a half before being sent home with a packet of pills.
My immediate reaction was predictably to suggest that we go round and slap the receptionist. Where do they breed these people? Couldn’t she have put the old lady at the front of the queue or was everyone waiting even older than 95?
Grabbing a few vital supplies we jumped in the car and went instead to the old lady’s house. Nurse did some nursing and got her into bed while I prepared food and drinks. Her response? ‘I’ve never been a bother like this’.
And of course she wasn’t. We were only too pleased to be off on another adventure although this one turned out well, certainly when compared with the time we were in a pantomime together, or managed to destroy the entire electrical system at our sons’ school minutes before an important visitor arrived. Let’s draw a thick burkha over that one.
And what did the patient most good was not the medicine but the fact that her friends spent time listening to her worries and putting her mind at rest.
It is good to talk, even if it’s not about something jolly.
Thank you all for listening.

What a week it has been in Merrie England readers! We have barely had time to mention the weather.
Two even more important things have been occupying our thoughts this week – the soap opera of British politics and my birthday, the difference being that although no two people could agree on events at Westminster a great many were kind enough to wish me well in the coming year, even if I shall have to overcome the disappointment of not being surprisingly invited to be a Minister for either side. (SURELY some mistake?)
Unlike Mr Cameron’s now empty diary mine has been packed; my Manolos have barely touched the floor. I have been taken out for afternoon tea no less than three times and what a joy it is that this wonderful tradition is now firmly back in fashion. Eggy sandwiches and champagne – is there a finer culinary combination?
I visited the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and I highly recommend twenty minutes viewing the dross on display there before going upstairs to see David Hockney’s latest work. It’s like cooling water after a trek across a hot and barren desert or slipping on a Valentino gown after a day in nylon workwear. Not to be missed and extremely nice tea available at Fortnums across the road.
Impossible to miss is the extension to the Tate Modern, an enormous MacMansion of Art with only two drawbacks. Firstly the lifts, of which there are admittedly dozens, are as crowded as Japanese trains and appear to be operated by means of a magic word which is kept secret. Secondly the only, only thing worth looking at is the view from the 10th floor terrace, much higher than it sounds, and it can only be a matter of time before someone is blown off by the hurricane strength winds. Camera at the ready, people. I liked the irony of the notices requesting that visitors do not let their gaze fall into the surrounding luxury tower blocks. Walk round with our eyes closed then? You didn’t need to ask. The art on display is even worse than the Summer Exhibits; at least those have the enthusiasm of amateurs, although on reflection the Tates exhibitors could not possibly be making a living as painters, unless they combine it with a little light decorating as well. My eyes were spurting blood and there was a thin, high shriek as my skin tried to tear itself from my body and follow Elvis out of the building. On the plus side there was lovely cake.
And baked goods brings me, somewhat immodestly, to the news that I won the Bake Off (Savoury Section) competition at the Strawberry Hill House Summer Party. And those who know my feelings concerning kitchen based activities will think that this was rather more worthy of a front page splash than Boris’s becoming Foreign Secretary. Turns out we both have hidden depths.

I sat next to a charming man at a lecture yesterday – actually an ex-neighbour whose property value and spirits have doubtless both lifted since my departure. The lecture was about 3D printing of a Grinling Gibbons inspired picture frame (We know how to party) and he asked if I was planning to visit Italy this summer. I was reminded of an impossibly grand dinner I once attended in Rome (No, I dont know why I was asked either) and the very snooty Italian on my right informed me that he never went to his palazzo in Tuscany in the summer. ‘Nobody goes there then’ he sneered, ‘Except the English’.
And with a single leap we arrive at my latest idea to make loadsamoney without the indignity of working.
Road signs, readers, road signs!
How many times, bowling along the nation’s highways and byways, have you noticed a road sign warning of the imminent danger of a passing deer? And how many deer have you seen within a mile of a road, unless, like me, you live near one of the Royal parks? Answer, I venture, is none. Not even one.
England is home to millions of cows and I imagine that at some time since cars were invented two or three of them may have wandered into the path of a passing vehicle. But deer? Not since the time of Robin Hood. Indeed people pay thousands of pounds in Scotland to crawl through midge-infested heather just to catch a glimpse of one yet someone, somehow has managed to corner, nay flood, the roadsides with Deer Signs, and probably made a fortune in the process.
And thus, via two roundabouts and a B road we come to Italy where there are more road signs to the kilometre than olive trees. There are signs telling you the name of each river you cross – what, in case you are travelling by boat? There are signs telling you the length of each tunnel you enter. ‘Hmmm, I dont think I’ll take this route; this tunnel is more than 175 metres long.’ There are endless signs warning of falling rocks which, if I am brutal, are pretty useless even as signs go. The rocks are either falling at any given time,in which case its a bit late to do anything about it, or they’re not. So why have the sign at all? Even I can see the sense of signs about old people crossing or children or exceptionally sharp bends. Thanks for that useful warning, provider of signs. I will slow down or possibly speed up if I’ve had about all I can stand of the old, the young or life itself. But rock falls? Advice Signor Signio, prego.
Touring around America I noticed that every single bridge had a sign warning that it could be icy in winter and the (previously unsuspected) frugal part of me thought it would make more sense, economically speaking, to simply flag up those bridges which held no such risk. In Tuscany, an area not popularly known as a ski resort, there are signs warning of snow about every two hundred metres. When? Where is this snow? Two hours drive further north, I grant you that the possibility exists but in that part of Italy the only peril facing the snow sign was that the paint would peel off in the searing summer heat. The man who persuaded the locals to cough up for those deserves a medal or a title or both.
So creative chums, let us put our collective heads together and seek out those parts of the world where the deer sign has yet to appear. Let us unite to save Bambi and make a few bob. There’s money in them there roads, friends. Welcome to the venison-lined lay-by.

I am going to start with a quote from Horace Walpole (Google him and the lovely Strawberry Hill House)
“Don’t let this horrid weather put you out of humour with your garden tho I own it is a pity that we should have brought gardening to perfection and have too bad a climate to enjoy it. It is strictly true this year – that ours is the most beautiful country in the world when glazed and framed.”
I am personally feeling a little glazed this morning having spent the last week on constant alert for a plague of frogs or locusts and then being tricked into celebrating the Welsh victory in an Italian cafe. All this without the in-house trials and tribulations at Kingston Kastle, a rich vein of inspiration.
My boys have been bickering like British politicians and readers may recall a previous incident when they came to blows under the dining table about the homophobic nature of the King James Bible. (You couldn’t make this up.). I sent them both to their rooms, an obvious sanction for people in their twenties. The latest spat was about the unauthorised wearing of a jacket and broke the most important of Commandments: Thou shalt make wake thy Mother up with thine bickering. Useless the Elder ended up with a very swollen hand which required minute and frequent inspection, often in the early hours, for the next week and my offer of immediate amputation was dismissed, dare I say it, out of hand. After a medically qualified visitor expressed a vague opinion that it might actually be damaged nothing else would do but a blue light, bells ringing dash to the nearest hospital where he was X-rayed within ten minutes. The staff there are old friends and know procrastination is pointless.
It turned out that he had an injury popular with the boxing fraternity (and prisoners punching walls in jails) so on the plus side the plaster cast could be passed off as a tribute to the late, great Mohammed Ali.
The fun continued when my late husband popped in to collect some incredibly important book he had abandoned along with his wife and children a quarter of a century ago and now wants back – only the book, needless to say. He remarked that I was looking tired which might appear to be concern to someone who had never met him.
‘I certainly am tired’ I informed him, somewhat archly, ‘Tired, exhausted, worn out and fed up with all of you. Perhaps you would like to do the next 25 years of solo parenting?’
How we laughed! And I would have punched him if I didn’t need both hands for the next month of nursing duties.