So it’s goodbye to hygge, readers. Move right along, nothing to see here. I don’t care what you spent on blankets and socks. Your new watchword is lagom – if you can get it past the evil eye of predictive text which is up there with Audi drivers on my list of ‘Things I really hate’. And if you are not at one with me on the car question just keep a note of every time you are tail-gated, under-taken or cut up at a roundabout for the next week and I guarateee it’ll be on yours. Join hygge as last years fashion, White Van man, once the terror of the tarmac. You are now toast, but not too brown obviously or you’ll get cancer.

Incidentally predictive text really is the curse of the educated writer, given that whoever designed it only knows twenty words and no foreign languages. Bet I know what car they drive to work …

Unfortunately, unlike the needs of a rich bachelor as identified by Miss Austen, this may not be a universal truth. Other countries might have their own road demons. It’s a cultural thing. I hear, for example, that pit bull dogs are actually regarded as ideal family pets in Australia

Back to lagom which early adopters will know is like hygge also a Scandinavian concept, Swedish for the pedant and that means you Harrison, and roughly translated for the mass market means balance. Not too much, not too little. Just enough. You may well be thinking that I am going to find this quite a challenge to implement, given that my life has never been one of moderation but that merely illustrates the limits of your lateral thinking. Taking a broad view of my life between the ages of 21 and fairly recently, it was mostly spent dashing about like a headless chicken, running round after other people, a waitress in the dining room of life. Ergo, in order to achieve lagom I shall have to relax and please myself from now on. Not selfishness, balance.

No emails or letters demanding further explanation, please. Sort it out for yourselves. I have already started.

So the Russians have been up to no good and have hacked into everything and everyone. Respect, Russians. I can’t even get into my own accounts – this blog would have appeared yesterday but I kept being told I didn’t exist. My work website requires me to change my password Every Single Time I log on. Average time to convince it I’m not Slavic is about 20 minutes and those in charge wonder why people aren’t using the site. My worst nightmare was trying to regain entry to my Facebook account, hardly a treasure trove of international secrets, which involved me having to send a copy of my passport to California. By post obviously because they of all people didn’t trust the internet. If Mr Putin can guarantee me access to my own damned sites, first time, every time, I’ll do whatever he wants in a Presidential Suite.

So onwards to the vexed question of the Donald and his latest shenanigans. I was listening to Frederick Forsyth on the wireless, practically the only man on the planet with a brain even bigger than Stephen Fry claims his is, and Mr F was of the opinion that not even someone as dim as Mr T would put himself at risk of a honey trap. God knows, I knew enough to have checked my hotel room in St Petersburg for cameras and I’ve never been a property developer. Or President. Or much photographed.

Somebody, somewhere would like to discredit Mr Trump, despite the fact that he is doing a fairly good job on his own. The problem is that there are just so many suspects with different agendas. It might be Putin but it could just as well be the first Mrs Trump – God knows she’s got a motive and enough money. It could be the FBI, CIA or any other combination of the alphabet. Who actually does want to see him successfully installed as the next leader of the Free World? Answers on the back of a postage stamp.

The Democrat Party hate him but not I suspect as much as the Republicans. Let’s face it, how are they EVER going to get elected again after God knows what the next four years will bring? No wonder Mr Trump is reluctant to move to Washington which at one time had more deaths by lead poisoning, two lumps rapidly and involuntarily ingested, than any other city in America. So using my tried and tested method of working out who has most to gain I put forward my candidate of choice – Mr Pence, the Vice President in waiting, with a laptop in the library. I wonder if the Russians agree?

The phone rang while I was sorting out the cupboard under the stairs. “How quintessentially January” remarked the caller on being appraised of this exciting news and I had a lightbulb moment, up there with Saul of Tarsus. January is in serious need of a re-brand.

Being British we see this, the darkest time of the year on so many levels, as something to be Got Through, shoulders to the wheel time, let’s clean the hamster’s cage but wait just a moment, folk. This is one twelfth of your life you are wishing away here. What if we turned it into ‘Be kind to yourself month’?

God knows you’ve probably had more than enough of being good to others over the last few weeks, queueing like a Cold War housewife in a million shops and making more beds than Ikea. Step one is, I hope it goes without saying, abandoning the threadbare notion of rustling up tasty meals from leftovers. My turkey carcass flew out of the kitchen window on Christmas night in order to give the local foxes a little festive treat and spare those indoors the horror of a turkey curry. DO NOT, even under the extreme influence of Bounty-flavoured Baileys, delude yourself into thinking something good can come from re-heated Christmas pudding. Let it go. Let it all go. The withered satsuma, the stinking Stilton, the untouched dates. Chuck them out with the tree. You will thank me.

Take to your bed or the sofa, swaddled in something soft and fluffy – this applies to the ladies as well – and treat yourself to a diet of After Eights dipped in cream-topped hot chocolate and daytime telly. Having ditched the idea of Dry January, what WERE we thinking about?, the possibility of a detox should follow hard on its heels. Detox is for a time when there are more than four hours of daylight. Weight loss can be filed under Wait Loss, do it later. We can and we will turn this time of year into something we look forward to. You are in need of some serious cosseting and I’m putting you personally in charge of making it happen.

Always an early adopter I’ve already started. A Happier January everyone.

In the same way that Teresa May and Hillary Clinton were described as ‘difficult’ women (Any woman who thinks she knows more than you do) so 2016 proved to be a difficult year, especially if you were even remotely famous because your chances of surviving to 2017 proved to be slightly less than zero.
I heard an interview with the man who runs the BBC Obituary department who complained that his shelves are as bare as a Comet store on Black Friday. Typical of a celebrity not to think of others.

Who can remember anything good about this year and don’t you dare say we had a good summer? I was there, people and we did not. We had a long hot scorcher in 1976 if you were looking for a comparison. In case you didn’t draw the curtains until June let me remind you that we had no Spring this year, going straight from a winter to a miserable autumn without collecting anything like £200. I have a friend who did winter in England, then went to New Zealand for winter and is now back here again for his third one of the year and you think you’re fed up.

I love the way that global warming has been renamed climate change because it became increasingly obvious that Bournemouth wasn’t suddenly enjoying tempreatures like the south of France and the general public were beginning to express doubts about the whole thing. For the record I am a non-believer in its man-made causes. I think it’s almost certainly a blip like the mini Ice Age that caused the Thames to freeze over and there is probably bugger all we can do about it. About 25,000 lawyers in London alone and nobody has checked the contract that says climate will undergo no more changes ever? I thought not. The worthy residents of Richmond dividing their rubbish into five different bins will not, in any way, shape or form, put right the belching smoke from a million Chinese factories and change, dear reader, will carry on happening whether we do it or not.

Why we’re playing the truth game I also don’t subscribe to the notion of evolution. If it existed why didn’t the first penguins just leave the Antarctic and breed somewhere else? How can it be a better bet to stay somewhere inhospitable and develop thick feet over the next 50,000 years than go somewhere warmer? It’s not the only sea with fish in it, is it? In a similar vein every time I see a programme about people having to walk 50 miles a day to fetch water I can’t help thinking that they should just move nearer a river. Explain that if you can, Darwin.

On the plus side, at least Christmas is behind us for another few weeks and I can start sneakily taking the decorations down tomorrow. It need hardly be said that the boys are sticklers for not moving a thing until January 5th, meaning themselves, especially if it involves giving me a hand to get the whole lot stuffed back in the shed.

So let’s embrace the host of new opportunities that is 2017 and hope that we are all unknown enough to survive the next six hours. Happy New Year.

AA Kingston has been unwell this week but not, I hope you will be relieved to hear, in a life threatening way. At least, not in my opinion but what do I know? (Although never forget my six months working on ‘General Hospital’ which must count as at least a foundation year in medicine.)
When the children were little and poorly there were only the two possible options, as every mother will recognise. If they are hot it is meningitis and if they’re not it’s leukaemia. Sorted. Plus side being the enormous relief when the disease in question turns out to be previously unsuspected measles or mumps.

My ailment arrived in the middle of the night – why, oh why can’t these things happen in daylight when you’re not so tired? – and you do not, gentle reader, need to know any details, certainly not if you’re reading this over breakfast. Or any meal, come to that. And incidentally don’t read at the table! How many times? Just don’t come whining to me when there’s marmalade in your laptop.

Next day I decided that it might be wise to check with NHS Direct for any advice on how to proceed, other than what I already knew: Do NOT leave the bathroom.
The phone was answered by a youth who was clearly in training for the World Speedreading finals and if you have money to spare he is definitely a contender. Still weak from my nocturnal adventures I hung up on him before my will to live, already in a fragile state, totally vanished.

Naturally they rang back. This time a women with a very unloveable bee in her bonnet.
‘Have you been abroad lately?’
‘No’
‘Have you been to West Africa?’
‘Isn’t that covered by abroad?’
‘Do you know anyone who has been to West Africa?
‘Almost certainly’
‘Are you spurting blood from anywhere?’
‘No. I think I would have mentioned that when you asked for my symptoms’
‘Could it be Ebola?’
Top thought! Let’s start with eliminating the most likely cause and come to think of it I did have a nice chat with a Professor of Infectious Diseases at my friend’s housewarming in September but, and thank God for this, I am pretty sure that there was no exchanging of bodily fluids over the canapés and champagne.

You can’t open a newspaper without someone saying how wonderful the NHS is but I suspect it’s main virtue is really that it’s free. Given the calibre of the people manning their phones, it’s no wonder it’s in a state. Are the people higher up the chain any better? I hope you can’t work you way up from Call Centre to surgeon. It’s a worry that I’m going to pop on a back burner for the festive season and I urge you to follow suit. Just a quick Shakespearean quote to finish – A plague on all their houses, and preferably the same one I had.

If you are wondering why there was an eerie silence yesterday it was because Cinderella did go to the ball, or at least to a very wonderful dinner at the extraordinary Strawberry Hill House and it took me most of Saturday to fight free of my whale bone and hair pins. And get the tiara back to the bank. It is quite hard work being grand,
We are hearing today of the death of the writer AA Gill, only three weeks after he announced in his restaurant review column that he was unwell, and not in the Geoffrey Barnard way, but with what he described as ‘the full English’ of cancer. Sadly he was, as my Mother was wont to say of anyone unde ninety, ‘No age’.
One of the few things I remain passionate about is the English language which was AA Gills medium, his art form, although with a deep irony he was dyslexic and had to dictate his copy, almost certainly the last journalist afforded that luxury. I also thank my lucky stars, not having a God to turn to, that I have it as my first language. I can’t remember exactly how many words it has – 60,000? you can Google it – but it’s way more than any other language, possibly of all the other languages put together. Imagine being a foreigner(A shudder ripples round the room) and having to learn it.
And it also makes learning a lot of other languages much easier because we’ve probably already requisitioned about half of their meagre quantity of words. A useful book called ‘Plain Tales of the Raj’ has a list of all the Indian words that we now assume were always our own – like bungalow and khaki. There are even five Inuit (Eskimo, in old money) words in regular use in this country – where did you think anorak and kayak came from? – and that could well be about a third of their total. What else did they need on a regular basis? Snow, ice, polar bear, run.
I don’t imagine that young folk have the remotest idea of who Enoch Powell was, and older readers won’t have much good to say about him, his politics being deeply unfashionable at the time, but having actually met him let me tell you that among his better qualities were his personal shyness, his integrity, his poetry – bet you didn’t know about that! – and his mastery of he English language. He was to oratory what AA Gill was to the written word; a masterclass in how to do it. It’s a shame that he will only be remembered for one ill advised speech. Those over 21 will also have heard of Bob Dylan, another wordsmith very properly recognised by the Nobel committee. Language does matter.
As I said before about Derek Jarman, AA Gill and I differ in that he was male, talented and now dead. Let’s just hope our wonderful language still has a long life in front of it.

AA Kingston (No relation)

What is a museum? I’m guessing this isn’t something that keeps you awake in the wee, small hours although, as always, I’m prepared to admit the somewhat unlikely possibility that I could be wrong. I think it may have happened once. A museum, certainly in this country, is actually a legal thing which means that people can lend or give or bequeath you stuff and get tax breaks. Obviously not the tat you’ve got stashed in your attic, unless Her Majesty is still avidly reading my weekly musings.

The lovely Strawberry Hill House is technically a museum although visitors have frequently noticed that the rooms are, by and large, empty. Legal jargon, not for the faint hearted. Your average visitor still harbours what we now know are entirely misplaced expectations. Small print is not for everyone. Anyway, well up to speed on this legal nicety and with my usual level of open-mindedness I went to a new museum this week, the Design Museum. Previously sited somewhere called Thames Shad, which I need hardly add is south of the river, it has relocated to the far more accessible Kensington. What could go wrong?

At the risk of offending readers, and although I can genuinely claim that some of my best friends are architects, I have to blame the man in charge of designing it. Doubtless he got the brief, read it at speed and thought it said ‘Design a Museum’ rather than Design Museum. Usual novice mistake and at the risk of appearing sexist (Some of my best friends are men etc) that is a very masculine shortcoming. ‘Instructions da da da’ they think, snatching up a pencil and then wondering why there are still bits left over at the end.

The building itself is indeed very striking with some lovely designery touches, like light-up handrails and seats in the stairs but unfortunately there isn’t much to see and what there is on display is still stuffed in the attic. I suspect a lot of people abandon the attempt to reach it. Award winning use of a large space being turned into a poky little room with not much in it.

So today’s invaluable advice is don’t bother to do more than take a quick peep in the door, even the shop is rubbish, and then hot foot it to a very good tapas restaurant just down the road. It being December I have now left the arid zone that was Dry November and taken to festive drinking. Let’s hope I don’t make an exhibit of myself this year.

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.