7 March 2021

 Parents here sigh with relief as children go back to school tomorrow, but the only tests in sight will be for Covid! Much is being said about mental health provision for children, something unheard of in my day. Some teachers talk about play and games being the most important thing. But whenever I see teachers or university students on TV quiz shows, it’s remarkable how narrow their general knowledge is, even in their own specialist subjects!  In 1954, when I was 7, each child needed to take tests in English and arithmetic in order to progress to the junior school. I remember being able to read the word pneumonia and to do long multiplication and division so was admitted to the junior school.  Rightly, the education system back then concentrated on academic rigour. It was all important, trumping all other concerns. How many of today’s 8 year olds could do the test below, set in 1931?

I’m all for children playing games and having fun but this should be after school and at the weekends. At primary level, the teacher’s job is to teach the basics rigorously. If a child can’t read, write or do arithmetic, their whole future life is jeopardised. 

28th February 2021

 And so the royal soap opera continues, real life and tinsel town merging once again. It’s got everything: global appeal, history and emotion. When Harry met Meghan morphs into the Oprah and Corden Show, with underlying questions left unanswered. My late brother used to talk about ‘Harry Hewitt’ and asked why a DNA test was never publicised. Delving further back, it’s tragic how royal protocol ruined Margaret’s and initially Charles’ lives by preventing their marrying a divorcee. The irony today is that if Harry had been prevented from marrying Meghan, none of the current upset would have happened. But, what excuse could the royals have given this time? Modern sensibilities rightly wouldn’t have accepted ‘a woman of colour’ reason, yet this is a far weightier issue which traditionalists say would have ‘sullied’ the royal line. Memories of Diana’s tragic last days come to mind and look what happened to her! I wrote about all this in An Englishwoman in America (click image on the right). Be quick. It’s out of contract on 3 March. But Harry’s future? It’ll all end in tears and a return to London. Just wait for the next episode.

21st February 2021

 Did you read about the 30 year old who was offered the vaccine early because his body BMI index was ‘in the thousands?’ They’d confused his height of 6’ 2” with 6.2 cm! At that height he’d have been trampled by the dog. Time for the UK to revert to all-imperial measurements instead of the current crazy system where planks can be 8’x 4’x 12 mm. There are dangers too in hospitals confusing decimal points in medicine doses. But the BMI index as a measure of health is also problematic. Many of my past family who died young were thin. At 19 I could eat anything and stay thin but my body metabolism changed markedly during pregnancy. From then on, my weight changed. Why is no-one researching how the body’s metabolism works and how to treat it in morbidly obese people? It isn’t just what you eat but the combination of that added to a metabolism not working correctly added to genetics. Meantime, what to do with my own ageing metabolism? For 8 weeks now, one system’s working better than all the others I’ve tried. I don’t eat anything until noon every day, just lots of sugar-less tea with lemon, then I eat normally the rest of the day. Does it work? Yes.

February 14, 2021

 Faangs for the  memory

Valentine’s Day. But no restaurants are open. Everything’s still one global internet shop owned by Bezos, the Christian philanthropist. The G7 doesn’t run the world. It’s Faangs:  Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. And the pandemic’s played into their hands, forcing everyone to use their services. Today they’re as much part of our landscape as the milkman and the coalman used to be in mine in the ‘50s. When we look out of our prison homes, all we see are delivery vehicles and supermarket vans. Inside, we’re all clicking and ordering. But I yearn for the days when we had large department stores and high streets thronged with people. I feel for traditional retailers who have seen their livelihoods stolen by Faangs, the former having to pay exorbitant business rates far greater than those with out of town giant warehouses. As lockdown eases: increase corporation tax for Faangs, revive high streets by increasing free shoppers’ carparks and reduce business rates for shops. Maybe then it’ll be Faangs for the memory!

7th February 2021

 I’ve changed a lot over the years. No longer do I want to read romances or books with pretty Xmas scenes, nor even today’s fashion for book covers showing the back of a woman wearing a red coat. No, books are more important than that. For 70 years I‘ve wanted to change the world but how am I as one person going to do that? There’s one injustice in particular that’s always rankled with me and for years I’ve waited for others to write about it or for film producers to highlight it, but in vain. So, a while ago, I decided to write a new novel with a strong central premise, highlighting an ancient, global wrong and ending with a solution.  But, as I finish it today and prepare to send it out to literary agents for the first time, will it be rejected out of hand by those looking for a ‘more commercial’ woman in a red coat? I could, of course, self-publish, but this particular idea needs professional marketing and promotion if it’s to effect any change in the world.  Or is there a reputable agent out there who will understand what I’m trying to achieve? All I can do is wait and hope.

31st January 2021

 As I put the finishing touches to yet another novel, struggling with difficult literary concepts like how to  ‘show’ not ‘tell’, I think about my life.  For a year I’ve lived in a virtual world. When writing, I’m internalising a story. Listening to the radio, watching TV, reading the paper or ever-changing social media, my body’s static but the world’s viewed inside my head. Tonight we plan to play Trivial Pursuit with friends but, of course, on Zoom. Even following my favourite team, Aston Villa, on my radio’s sport channel, the ups and downs of winning and losing take place inside my head.  How to get out of this virtual world?  Is anything ‘real’ happening? Yes. On Tuesday we’re both getting our first covid jab in Bromsgrove, 5 miles away. Couldn’t wait any longer to hear from our GP but discovered I could actually book both 1st and 2nd jabs online. First outing for a year.  Hope the car starts ok. Will we get bad side effects? All of that looks ‘real’ at last.  Can I soon get back to proper, physical, life please?

24th January 2021

 Last night I watched All the President’s Men, starring a very young Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Ah the differences in work culture between then and now. It was largely set in a giant newspaper office at the Washington Post. All the reporters were men, the few women acting as secretaries or telephonists. The senior bosses were all older men who had (correctly!) taken decades to climb the managerial ladder. All the staff were white Caucasian. Each desk held a clunky typewriter and a heavy black phone with a dial. After typing, paper was ripped from the roller (wrong), instead of first pulling down a lever and carefully taking the paper away from the platen (as I was taught.) And if you wanted to make an outside call, you needed to first ask an external (female) operator. People chain smoked, they ran along the streets for an urgent scoop and no-one was fat. Those were the days.  Government corruption, I hear you say?  Oh, nothing much different there of course...