Archives for August 2011

That's certainly been my experience, and so it has been for an old friend of mine from breakfast TV days, Ulrika Jonsson. Her debut novel, "The Importance of Being Myrtle" is published tomorrow, the story of a 58 year old woman who is suddenly widowed, and is at last freed from the prison of an emotionless marriage.

Good luck, Ulrika. It's daunting trying something new, so muzeltov!

It already feels like that here. I'm wearing my red winter cardie and my black winter shoes, and I'm fed up with this feeling that summer is already over when I don't remember it beginning. All of the shops are branding "Back To School" banners, and that always brings back those dreaded feelings that we used to get when we were kids, that the summer hols are drawing to an end and the daily grind of school starts again.

Here's hoping for an unexpected Indian Summer.

Somehow I reckon that this year, it's not going to happen...

Please don't call them slop buckets, was also the plea from two Henley ladies with whom I chatted on the radio. It sounds revolting.

But in my experience, they are. I'm all for recycling, and putting rubbish where it belongs instead of automatically into landfill. So yes, organic waste from the kitchen should be turned into compost if you can. But at what cost?

Where I used to live a couple of years ago - these waste caddies end up littering kerbsides, stinking and attracting vermin. You spend a small fortune on biodegradable bags that degrade before the next bin collection, and end up having to use expensive hot water and bleach to clean them out for hygiene's sake. The whole saga is an absolute nightmare, becomes an unhealthy obsession and takes over your whole life. And doesn't it just bring out the worst in people? Today, I encountered one woman who denies ever having organic kitchen waste. So what do you do with a chicken carcass and all the gibletty bits, I asked? She puts them out in a nearby field for the foxes, came the reply!

Another implied that a thrifty and conscientious housewife would have no waste at all!

So no need for the slop bucket, then?

"Don't call it that", she remonstrated.

Why not? It IS a slop bucket!

"My waste is never sloppy", she retorted.

So that's my problem. You've got to have the right sort of waste.

Good luck to everyone in Windsor and Maidenhead. You're going to need it.

Had a wonderful time at an extended family get together in Bournemouth, and we all trecked out onto the beach to sit in the sun and watch the now famous Bournemouth Air Festival - a totally free airshow centred around the beach and all of the crowds. Fantastic to see the Red Arrows, of course!

Then, of course, we heard the terribly sad news of the crash, and the tragic death of Reading-born Flight Lieutenant Jon Egging. None of us, after watching the spectacular display, could believe it. We haven't lost a Red Arrow since the seventies - but this awful tragedy reminds us all of the danger these men (and this year, the first ever female Red Arrow) face routinely just to entertain the rest of us watching below.

Grounded for the present, I wonder how soon we'll see them brighten our skies again?

Meanwhile - any ideas for great Silver Wedding pressies?

Like those students, and thousands of others between school and university, my son has been determined to take on an exciting and challenging adventure. He chose the jungles of central America, helping to clear up after Hurricane Richard. They chose the icy wastes of the Norwegian archipelago, and their sojourn ended in an almost unbelievable nightmare. Many mums like me are today thinking: "There but for the grace of God..." Because no matter how much homework you do, no matter the costs involved and the planning you invest, you never quite know what dangers, unexpected happenings or just bad luck might befall your kids once they come face to face with life at the sharp end.

I get the occasional email or text whenever my son gets within a gnat's breath of an internet connection. I want to know if his mosquito net is working, whether he's got enough antihistamines, and what the other kids are like. Instead I get stuff like this, just a few hours ago:

"enjoying a bit of R&R after project 1, lots of hard work: with a 3 day hike up a mountain, clearing trails through the jungle, blistered and bitten all over, scorpions and bullet ants, jaguar tracks and even more jungle; painted a community centre and climbed up a waterfall. Sliced my hand open with my machete, but the doc stitched me up and all is well, next we'll be doing some more training and then a multi day trek before project 2, which is something to do with a bird sanctuary. Week 2 over, 6 to go!"

In last week's missive, he told me not to worry too much about malaria - cos what was REALLY bad were the "bot flies" which lay their larvae under your skin. Oh, and the spiders were the size of dinner plates.

It'll make a man of him, I've taught myself to think, whilst also praying he makes it to manhood.

I suppose that's what the parents of young Horatio Chapple thought, too, when they waved him off on his Polar adventure. Now, my heart goes out to them in what must be horrendous grief and cruel imaginings of what their son's last minutes must have been like. What on earth are they going to do when their two younger sons ask if they, too, can join a perilous expedition to God knows where, in a couple of years' time? I don't know how they'll ever sleep another night. And yet all of us parents know that you have to "let go" and that kids love to do dangerous and challenging things. It's in their DNA.

I remember one of those recent "Inside The Human Body" programmes on the BBC, where they actually argued that the teenage mind is hard wired to take risks which in later life they'd recognise as foolhardy. That's how humans are programmed to learn, and I suppose that Darwinian logic would always demand some fatalities.

There is something about that age, isn't there? The age between, say, 16 and 24, where youngsters (particularly male) actively seek danger, violence and trouble? Is that why, when the Twitter call goes out, young men with nothing else to do seem to join in a meaningless riot on the streets of London?

Perhaps young men have to get their kicks, need to pump adrenaline. And if they don't get it one way, they'll find another.

Makes a mum feel quite anxious - especially a Mum of boys. There's something in their psyche we need to better understand, though perhaps you cannot change human nature. Young men (and perhaps women, too, in growing numbers) need to challenge both themselves and society.

It's just a bit frightening to watch and witness, isn't it?

Always fancied keeping chickens in my garden - but I gather that, nowadays, you'd be doing them a favour (as well as getting cheap eggs) by rescuing them from a life of battery hell. Since new legislation came into being, thousands of former battery chicks are seeking new homes. Doing the research and planning a special programme right now!

Pictured here are producer Marie's rescued battery hens, Mabel, Bella and Dusty.

I've never grown garlic in my life but this is an inspiration!

Her mum, she says, taught her to grow old gracefully, too.

"My mother told me an amazingly wise thing that I have also found to be true. It's that you should never worry about growing older, because an amazing thing happens. As you reach each age you find, like a miracle, you've got the weapons or the tools to deal with it. So your body gets older but your mind gets better. You have learned how to deal with relationships. You've realised you're not the only person in the world and beauty is not the most important thing. To be obsessed by your looks is pathetic!"

Hear hear!