There is not much I get passionate about nowadays – shoes, obviously. Cakes ditto. That is one of the many upsides of getting older; you would rather control your blood pressure than change the world. However, if somewhere on your bucket list is a desire to see me foaming at the mouth, and you’re not a dentist, talk to me of social workers.

They get a bad press because the only time anyone mentions them it’s to do with some incident which would lead a normal human to die of shame.

They are understaffed, they wail. Really? Hands up everyone reading this who has ever worked somewhere that was overstaffed, where management thought they would employ a couple of dozen extra people with nothing to do just to get bums on seats in the canteen. (Clearly we have to exclude ITN in its hay day from this. We needed to be major crisis ready at at all times.)

This week’s adventure features attendance at a Child Protection Awareness course which I rather naively thought might help with the day job. Not that I see that many children but it pays to be prepared. I’ve never felt drawn to working with minors, unlike every single pervert in the country it would appear. The day was run by a social worker who made flesh the stereotype of even the most limited imagination. Slightly plump middle aged woman, sporting a plain shift dress with a jaunty faux silk scarf round her neck and radiating SMUG from every single pore. To say she talked down to us doesn’t begin to describe it. I don’t even use that tone to a tin of cat food, not on a regular basis.

The thrust of her talk was that you should always keep records of everything, and never, ever go home until you passed the problem onto someone higher up. You can’t criticise the careful keeping of records – they come in handy for the enquiry that inevitably follows the next major disaster. Someone good at sums should work out how many extra social workers we could afford if the money hadn’t all been spent on enquiries. But actually getting off your arse and DOING something didn’t seem to be on her agenda.

I haven’t seen such blatant covering of backs since I was married to a lawyer.

I raised the case of a Romanian street prostitute I had recently seen. She claimed o be 21 but I would bet the farm on her not being even 16 – probably about 14. She was tiny, had a high pitched voice and was dressed like a toddler at an American ‘beauty pageant’. She couldn’t even spell what was supposed to be her name, didn’t know her address and said she was living with ‘some friends’. I’d have said she was a vulnerable child at high risk but what do I know? Her passport stated that she was 21 so no-one from the police or social services would do anything, although to be fair I expect they carefully noted it on a file.

Now to the blood curling bit. What do you imagine Our Lady of the Filing Cabinet had to say about this? Aloud and to a crowded room so you can check this is fact.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way but you have to think about what worse sort of life she had had in Romania’.

Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of that which makes everyhing all right. She declined to say at which age – 10, 8, 4 – the scales would tip the other way. No doubt this is the same level of thinking that allowed events in Rotherham to go on for so long.

I’d like to say you couldn’t make it up but are any of us actually surprised?
I made my own careful note of her name if you’d like to drop her a line. My blood is still boiling.

According to my friend at the bookmakers if you had put 10 shillings (Look it up) on Trump and Brexit to turn out as they did you would now be worth almost as much as an episode of the new Top Gear. Sadly I didn’t, both happened and so far nothing much seems to have changed, a bit like the Millenium when all the computers were going to grind to a halt and bring about the end of civilisation. Except it never happened, did it?
So grasping the nettle that actually we can deal with the different and survive, let’s take another, even bigger leap into the dark.
Let’s abolish Christmas. Yes, you heard right folks, let’s just not do it. Whoa, Lady K gets radical! A bit like building a wall along the Mexican border, no-one thinks it is possible but bear with me, as they say at call centres just before you hang up. I suspect that about 50% of the population are already thinking Yes! on this and that would be the women of the Yule-tide celebrating world who are on the edge of nervous collapse from the beginning of October, Boxing Day being the date when they finally tip over it. No man worth his salt, on the other hand, gives the whole business much of a thought until December 23rd when he realises that yet again it is going to fall on the 25th and therefore we won’t be asking for their opinions. They do not get a vote.
There could be exceptions, perhaps in homes with children under 10, but even there lets limit it to a stocking, a carrot for Rudolph and being allowed to eat After Eights for breakfast. Possibly a bit of playing with wrapping paper for toddlers.
If that sounds a step too far perhaps a good compromise would be to have it every four years, like the Olympics or the US presidential elections. You certainly wouldn’t want either of those to be an annual event would you? Let’s just get off the whole crazy bandwagon and reclaim 2 months of our lives. We can fling wide the doors of our Festive madness and walk free. We could instead adopt the latest trend for the Norwegian thing called hygge – staying in with cashmere socks, candles and a box set – throw in a bottle of Baileys and what’s not to like?
So that’s a firm No to tyranny and stop fretting about the Donald. It’s not as if the sane people have made such a good job of running the world is it?

Top slogan, eh people? Up there, I venture, with ‘Less is more’. I was introduced to it today by a colleague who tells me it’s been adopted as the watchword of some organisation they are involved with. No, I can’t actually recall what but still a great slogan and well worth requisitioning for this weeks title. A veritable summing up of where we are now.

I was easing into the day at 0956 this morning when the telephone rang from a withheld number – always a cause for concern – and thinking it was the same publicity shy caller I had spoken to two minutes earlier about a birthday cake I foolishly answered it. (Never give in to a flattering comparison of yourself with Mary Berry. It is invariably a trap).

Too late to go into my standard routine – thick feigned foreign accent saying that Missy Kingston she gone China, six moths, no email – and before I knew it I had been bludgeoned into dashing off to do a little urgent hanging and flogging. In a legal sense, if you please, rather than the dominatrix scenario that leapt into your rather grubby mind. How very Trump of you and that is all I’m going to say on that subject except why, oh why, didn’t we all put millions on him to win? Apparently they predicted it on The Simpsons over ten years ago. Imagine the odds you could have got!

It was a day of shocks. Until 0956 I had been awake but like the quintessential English lady that I am, still abed whilst I read the Hatch and Dispatch in the Times, drank coffee, opened my post and completed the crossword. I had been toying with the idea of moving my pedicure forward so that I wouldn’t risk being late for my luncheon appointment,and of course I like to be back by three for my afternoon nap, when I was cruelly expected to rush off to some outer suburb for a dose of Real Life, something to which regular readers will know I have a particular aversion.

Imagine my surprise when relating my abandoned plans for the day, my co-workers revealed that none of them enjoy a siesta, remaining relentlessly awake for the entire day. The stamina of these people. Probably down to drugs, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m still reeling from having stayed up all night on Tuesday waiting for a surge of pro-Hilary sentiment that never materialised.

But chins up, readers and stride forward into an uncertain future. We shall adapt and overcome. It’s a comfort.

I once went to see the remake of St Trinians with two girlfriends, one American and one English. The American was aghast at the unimaginable horror of it all. We Brits were crying with laughter at the happy memories it brought back of dangling smaller pupils out of dorm windows whilst the worse for home brewed hooch.
The original was WITHOUT DOUBT based on my alma mater, which is easily illustrated by telling you that one famous old girl is Jo Brand, probably a danglee in my day. I rest my case.
On Monday I met up with two old classmates, June and Clare, neither of whom I had seen for many years, for a respectable ladies lunch. This would have been somewhat in contrast to the last time I saw June when we were driving around Hawaii drinking Mai Tais out of pint glasses. I can’t imagine why I thought any of us would have mellowed with age.
I asked Clare if she still played the violin for my clearest recollection is that she was rarely without her violin case, like a Mafia hit man in a gym slip. It turns out she never even had an instrument – I expect we threw that out of the window as well – and the case was merely a cover story to get out of the school,in theory to attend a music lesson, but in fact to load it up with fags and chocolate from the nearest newsagent. She also remembered being locked in the history cupboard repeatedly but we clearly must have let her eventually. How people bear grudges!
Lunch started to go downhill after the second bottle and the restaurant eventually started plying us with liqueurs, probably in the hopelessly optimistic expectation that we would pass out and be quiet.
Instead we retired to the wonderful Bar Italia for espressos and brandies. And fags. It wouldn’t have been a reunion without them. Such a shames you can’t get 5 packs of Players No 6’s anymore.
At some point during the evening a man at the next table presented me with a beribboned box from a ludicrously expensive Japanese patisserie. God knows why.
On the way home I gave it to the nice young lady at my local corner shop – apparently. Next day I was very surprised to hear about it. It turns out that although the cake was almost as battered as I was she ate it and discovered it contained fish. What is WRONG with the Japanese? Does anyone, anywhere want Squid flavoured doughnuts? However, given the obvious expense she thought I had gone to, she felt obliged to finish it although she is, it turns out, a vegetarian.
Ungrateful girl should consider herself lucky I didn’t lock her in the freezer cabinet. Perhaps I am mellowing after all.