The Blind Truth

“A pop of colour does the trick”, or so I have been recently instructed. Even the most rudimentary of t-shirts can be dressed up with the addition of an ill-fitting jacket. It might work for Zoom but would it be good enough for real life? Would it work for a real evening out? Experience has taught me that the fish, I know I will order, often comes dressed in butter so it’s wise to give thought to...

Not that this has ever happened to me, but if I were to find myself in a long and boring zoom call, I might feel inclined to do a bit of online shopping at the same time. The sort of thing that I might find myself bidding for would be books about working animals. I could work myself into a lava in the search for Lloyd, an illusive police horse, probably long since dispatched to the knackers. If I...

Everyone loves a bit of personal administration. Don’t they? There is nothing like changing arrangements for paying your rates charges or changing your direct debits. You can do it on-line and if that fails, well it fails. You will be accumulating charges, with no apparent means of stopping them, from here until way beyond next Monday. Searching the website for telephone details will not help beca...

The Baby Grand has arrived. I was so moved by the miracle of new life, that I went to an actual shop and purchased a small floppy rabbit suitable for babies under three months old. For clarity, this was not a real rabbit, but a stuffed toy rabbit. Then my largesse got the better of me and I decided that what every baby brother needs is a Superhero older brother, so I invested in a Batman outfit, s...

It might have been the colour of nobility and power in the world of the ancients but purple been on the back foot in public life over recent years. It’s not fashionable to wear your ambition on your sleeve these days. Purple though, is making a comeback. No longer are old men reduced to exercising a love of luxury in their secret choice of purple underpants. These days it’s everywhere. Not underpa...

I’m incandescent with rage. It might be more accurate to say that I’m florescent with rage because I can feel my colour rising. It’s not that a lack of access to an on-street parking permits will result in the towing away of my hugely expensive car. I don’t have one to tow away. I’m much more concerned that my friends will stop popping in for cups of tea and even the odd glass of wine because they...

“Let’s go to the supermarket and buy oats so we can make flapjacks,” I proposed. The Grand moved like grease lightening. I think it a prerequisite that any trip to the shops should be made fully clothed and in shoes. Sensing that I was unlikely to yield on this point he sat down, stuck his foot out and handed me a shoe. “Hold Granny’s hand” the DiL instructed. He nodded. “Hold my hand and don’t le...

The Son and the DiL are having a night off. They are going to wear grown up clothes, for possibly the very last time in a couple of decades, before driving half way across the south of England to attend a wedding, on a Wednesday. I am now in training to step in and offer soothing words when the inevitable happens and the Grand wakes up just as I am reaching the limit of my ability to stay awake. A...

My friend the Doctor, the one who wore her contact lenses in the wrong eyes for longer than she could reasonably be excused for, is a keen wild swimmer. I watched a film about Hampstead Pond and ever since then I thought I’d like to get into it. The Doctor offered to take me, not to Hampstead Pond but a lake near Andover in a location I am keeping secret. She even said she could lend me a wetsuit...

She didn’t say so, but my kitchen is a bit of a disgrace. What the Goddaughter did say was “Yeah, the doors are all chipped. It looks nasty. I could paint those for you.” “How difficult is it to paint kitchen doors?” “Not difficult,” she said. Then she shrugged and stuck out her bottom lip. I’m not slow on the uptake. “What do you mean by not difficult?” I asked. “Not difficult,” she shrugged agai...

The Goddaughter, and her various assistants, have been helping to keep my house in order. Reputation is everything and without it, she says, she would not have a cleaning round the envy of the most energetic of entrepreneurs. She keeps her clients. Our shared desire to live in a clean house is one of those bonding experiences that she ensures and I take her word for. Taking her word for it is not...

I got the call on Tuesday. I’m not talking literally. It came in a text message and instructed me to follow the link to online booking. I did as I was told but it didn’t like my text enlargement. It would be a best guess then. If I had more of an eye for detail, I might not have made such a hash of it. A ten-minute car journey could be anything from twenty minutes or an hour on, that Emperor of tr...

I’ve had THE jab. Jabs and jibes were the theme of the day. The mysteries of temporary signage that declare where to go, remained just that, a mystery. It was a good job the Physio Witch had provided fulsome direction of how to access a community hall that was at the far end of a Sainsbury’s car park, behind a doctor’s surgery with a walkway to it, so grand, it rivalled the spot where I keep the e...

There are not many winners in the time of Corona Virus, but dog breeders seem to be amongst them. This has generated a proliferation in the extendable dog lead. The extendable dog lead, which is my enemy, is not the only thing that has proliferated. Where there are extendable dog leads there are frequently dogs attached to the other end, busy relieving themselves of their breakfast. Where once the...

The superlight walking poles have really come into their own since round three of lockdown. I’ve spent the last year perfecting my cane and pole techniques and I’ve been feeling pretty smug about where they have landed. I’m choosing my words carefully here. I could never have imagined converting the cane or the pole in a way that you might hanker after a nice bit of cashmere or a beautiful silk, b...

There is a fine line between fame and infamy and oh how easy it is to cross that line and achieve infamy by mistake. It was with a bit of trepidation that I approached the idea of speaking to the nation, or at least the part of it that listens to radio four and has not tuned out for an evening of Netflix. Who wouldn’t tune out given the choice, when the viewing is as tempting as some of the steamy...

Famous for our love of animals, the Brits have been busy filling up refuges for unwanted pets for decades. It’s an improvement on drowning or leaving the runt of the litter on the side of the road to be squashed or taken home by some unsuspecting driver who, having felt compelled to give their break pad a good work out, cannot help themselves. We’re full of contradictions. I’m a fan of the dachshu...

The subject of blood pressure is enough to give you hypotension. In the quest to stave of hypertension, the GP now commands that all her patients over 50 have regular blood pressure checks. The annual summons arrived in a text message that demanded that I attend the surgery and use the blood pressure pod in the waiting area to ensure an accurate measurement. A phone call was in order, to check whe...

Having an IT upgrade is not that exciting to me. I know there are some people who are in heaven at the prospect of a five-point switch box. I’m more of a shoe girl myself. I accidentally pressed “command y” instead of the “t”. I never knew that this is the shortcut to checking out browsing history. I’ve never felt the need to have a shortcut function to look at what I was looking at yesterday, but...

In the holiday between Christmas and New Year the stillness of short dreary days is punctuated with bracing walks and meals. Perhaps its more accurate to say that this is the time to run down the contents of the freezer and eat the left over Brussel Sprouts between strolls. At what point though, are leftovers beyond consumption? I usually palm off my leftovers on the Right Hand Neighbours. They ar...

Some of my relationships have brought great joy. Some have been transitory. Some have been long lasting and deep. None has been quite as shattering as my relationship with glass. Glass is the unseen menace in my world. Its attentions are largely unwanted and unwelcome. Just when you think you are over it, there it is again, making its presence felt. An early encounter with toughened glass left me...

The Artist, the one who drives the Rollscanardly, told me that her family played a lot of parlour games when she was growing up. Her siblings were keen on the Name Game. That’s the one where someone writes the name of a famous person on a post it note and sticks this to your forehead. By asking lots of questions you have to figure out who it is. It might have been Mary Queen of Scots or Florence N...

My friend, Septic Tank, likes to watch films with the audio description on. It saves her husband the bother of having to listen out for that often asked question “What’s happening now?” There will be no snoozing in the cinema for him without the sought after audio description. She and I had a concerted effort to see more theatre and despite our distain for the musical, we couldn’t resist #Fiddler...

“The moment has come. Centuries from now almost all human beings have lost the ability to see.” So says the trailer for #Apple TV’s new series “See”. To set the scene, “Some say that sight was taken from them by God.” “No kidding,” I say. “But something’s different. After so many years. The children. They have the ability to see.” “Whoopee do,” I marvel. No. The power of sight is what you might de...

“Where’s the exit?’ I asked, trying to beat a retreat from Café Nero Piccadilly. “First door,” my tea drinking companion replied. If you have ever been curious about what lives in the cupboards of cafes, I can put you out of your misery: There are more loo rolls than have ever been gathered together in one place. There are buckets, industrial quantities of cleaning material to deal with dirt and s...