Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Charles and Camilla

There was a story in the paper this week about Prince Charles' second wife, Camilla, wearing a brooch which Princess Diana was given when she married Prince Charles.

I clearly remember Charles and Diana's wedding day. I've never been a terrific fan of royalty and I don't much care forPrince Charles, but I watched the wedding as most English people did and I remember being struck by this tiny figure, such a young girl, dressed in a huge flouncy wedding dress and almost swamped by it. She looked very apprehensive, very inexperienced and rather overwhelmed. People say that by the day of the royal wedding she had an idea what she was in for as she had begun to suspect Charles and Camilla might still be having an affair.

Diana of course was from the English upper class, from an aristocratic family, and perhaps Charles and the other royals expected her to take it in her stride when she discovered that Mrs Parker-Bowles was still sleeping with the newly-married Charles. The seceret affair was not very secret and Diana was expected to tolerate it. But at 19-years-old, Diana was perfectly entitled to be in love and be idealistic. She was too young and inexperienced to understand what was tacitly demanded of her: give birth to the royal heir and a spare and turn a blind eye as your husband beds Andrew Parker-Bowles' wife. The story was only made seedier and more incestuous by the fact that many people said Camilla's husband was sleeping with Princess Anne while Camilla was hopping in and out of bed with Charles. Whatever the truth of that, it is certain that Camilla cuckolded her husband and Prince Charles was a sexual willing partner in the deceit.

The upper class and royalty have always done as they pleased.

But it's interesting after the Diana years and the tragedy which ended her young life, to see the way that Catherine, or Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, is coping with marrying a British prince. She has the advantage of being 30, of course, and she lived with William for years before marrying him. He appears to be genuinely in love with her. And Kate certainly seems more confident than Princess Diana did in the early years and yet she's facing almost as much public scrutiny.

I have a friend who tells me that there's a fierce campaign being conducted by Clarence House - Charles and Camilla's people - to denigrate the future queen Catherine and rehabilitate Camilla's image since she is seen as a scheming adulteress and yet wants to be queen of England (or Britain I suppose.) According to my friend, Charles's supporters feel they have to disparage Kate in order to try and get British people to support the idea of Camilla as queen.

I don't know about that but I do know that, as an English woman over 80, I'd far rather see Catherine as queen in England than Camilla. Catherine, like Princess Diana before her, is a young woman in love. She will no doubt have children with William and she conveys a sort of innocence, and happiness, to be married to her prince. A lot of unpleasant things have been said about her middle-class background but it seems to me that every time she appears in public she looks smart, she behaves well and she seems to enjoy herself and enjoy meeting others. More importantly, she has done nothing as far as anyone's aware that is deceitful or openly hurtful to others. She is not an adulteress and she has not befriended a young woman while bedding her husband. The same can never be said now of Camilla. Camilla and Charles also have the ridiculous phone epsiode that they can never live down where he said in a phone conversation that he would like to be reincarnated as her tampax. The image is rather revolting but even worse is the fact that Charles and Camilla were gaily and routinely committing adultery while Diana was pregnant and then at home looking after the young princes, William and Harry. There is no excuse for Charles' behaviour and none for Camilla's either.

The next queen of England/Britain/the Commonwealth will be a head of state, of course, but more importantly (since that's a fairly formal role) she will be an international ambassador for Britain. Whether one likes royalty or not, or approves of royalty or not, Britain will continue to have a royal family for some time. Their relevance, if they have any, is as ambassadors for their country. They play a role not unlike the role of Obama and his wife or Cameron and his wife, but without the political power. That is, they present an image of their country to the outside world as well as within Britain.

So what kind of royal ambassador do the British want to have once the queen is gone? Charles and Camilla would present a pretty wretched image. Charles has a reputation for being grumpy and eccentric. He and Camilla both have their history of adultery. Camilla also has the air of a scheming mistress determined to get Diana's husband at any cost. And I believe she now has the air of a woman determined to get her hands on the queen's crown as well. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge on the other hand are untainted. They are newly married and project a certain innocence and hopefulness. They do not divide opinion in the way Charles and Camilla do. And they don't offend people in the way that Charles and Camilla, with their history of extra-marital sex and cruelty to Diana, often do.

To see how differently the two women are viewed, think for a moment about the jewellery they wear. It was reported the other day that Camilla went to the races at Cheltenham very publicly displaying on her coat a brooch that was worn by Diana, a wedding gift. Lots of commentators said how insensitive it was of Camilla, who pinched Diana's husband, to pinch her jewellery too. Almost like she was brandishing a trophy in public: "I get whatever want. And I wanted what Diana had." There will always be a sleazy aspect to Camilla and her relationship with Charles.

Now think about the engagement ring William gave to Kate. It was the diamond and sapphire engagement ring Charles had given to Diana. And that was a lovely gesture from a young man who, as he said, wanted to find a way to include his mother in his forthcoming wedding. It was a also a gesture of hope made by a young man who clearly hopes that he can in some way make up for his mother's unhappy marriage by having a happy marriage himself. Giving Kate Diana's ring was a way of trying to make right what Charles and Camilla inflicted on his mother. As Kate showed the TV cameras the ring, the couple were smiling and at ease. There was nothing to be ashamed of, no sleazy past to be skirted round. It was a gesture which was perfectly pure, in contrast with Camilla slapping Diana's brooch on her lapel and heading off gung-ho to the races.

So although the monarchy is in essence hereditary, this English woman thinks it will stain the country's reputation if Charles becomes king and Camilla becomes queen. I don't much care about the constitutional argument which says that Charles' marriage to Camilla was illegal and bars him from being king and her from being queen. I just think that the pair of them can't have it both ways. They decided to cheat and sneak in and out of bed with each other while they were both married to other people. Well, all right - that was their choice. But they shouldn't then be accepted as King and Queen. They should keep a low profile, try to keep out of the way and let William and Catherine take the throne when the queen dies. "But they can't - it's the monarchy" their supporters cry. "It's hereditary." Yes, it is the monarchy and titles are hereditary. But monarchs can abdicate the throne. Many people say Charles should, and he certainly could. In my view, when the time comes, he ought to.

Shingles at 82 - pain and fatigue

In November 2011, I started feeling more tired than usual. Extremely fatigued in fact. As I'll be 83 this year I'm quite used to having an hour's sleep in the afternoon (particularly if I've had a good lunch and a glass or two of red wine.) But this was an unheathy sort of fatigue. I felt tired and unwell. Then I became aware of pain in my right side. Or rather, not in my right side but on the skin under my ribs on the right side. I looked in the mirror on my wardrobe and saw I had developed a long sweep of what looked light reddish bruises stretching from under my ribs round to my back.

I'm luck that I have a diligent young doctor who doesn't mine making house calls to elderly patients. When he came to examine me, he diagnosed shingles very quickly. "It'll take several weeks to heal" he said "but at least we've caught it and diagnosed it quickly so you can start on antivirals straight away."

I started taking the medication within 3 days of getting the first symptoms and apparently, with shingles, the earlier you start treatment the better. What I didn't know at the time was that shingles is very common in people over 80 and that very often it leads on to another painful condition - post-shingles neuralgia.

Anyway, for six weeks I was housebound. I was so tired that I stayed in bed most of the day. If I got up in the morning and made tea and ate some breakfast, I'd need to go back to bed by about 10am. Friends and family came in to help me - to make meals for me, offer a cup of tea or just chat. But mostly I needed to be alone. Shingles makes you feel pretty awful and you just need to doze and sleep to recover.

A lot of people, including a friend who is a retired doctor, asked me if the illness was very painful. Shingles is apparently often extremely painful as it makes your nerve endings flare up with inflammation. At first, I mostly felt discomfort rather than real pain. But that changed and after six weeks I really needed painkillers. My doctor prescribed me a medication that I found out was actually an anti-depressant. Not only that, but my daughter read the instruction leaflet and saw that a side-effect of the drug was feeling suicidal. "Right" she said "you're not taking these. You might be in pain but we're not having you throw yourself off the balcony!"

So we went into town, to Guildford, to Boots to see if the pharmacist could recommend something better. One complication is that I take Warfarin for a heart arrhythmia. If you take Warfarin you can't take aspirin or any other anti-coagulant because you risk making your blood too thin. If that happens and you cut yourself, you can lose a lot of blood. And even if you don't cut yourself, thin blood can make you feel very fatigued. And fatigue was already one of the strongest symptoms of shingles that I was experiencing....

The Boots pharmacist sold me some sort of painkiller which she said wasn't contraindicated with Warfarin. But it didn't seem to make any difference. I still had the pain - a sort of inflammation - a burning pain. The marks on my side were still evident after several weeks too.

My generation went through the second world war so I suppose we learnt not to make a fuss about things unless they're really important. I knew that the pain of shingles wasn't dangerous or life-threatening so that made it easier to tolerate. After six weeks stuck in my flat, I slowly started to go out once in a while. I could still get very tired and the pain was still there but I had a little more energy and regained my interest in life. By Christmas 2011, I was feeling quite a lot better and spent the holiday with my daughter and her family in London. We ate well and drank plenty of champagne and wine so I'd have to say I was on the road to recovery.

Still, it's January 2012 now and I still have the red marks on my side and some residual pain. My doctor told me that once an older person recovers from shingles they're quite likely to suffer from post-shingles neuralgia and it appears that's what I've got. It means the nerves in my skin continue to be inflamed and cause pain. It's a flipping nuisance sometimes. At 82, I really want to enjoy the time I have left and so I hope for good health. Some days I feel like I'm falling apart. I'm partially sighted, have various aches and pains, a heart condition for which I take Warfarin and Digoxin, and arthritis which sometimes bugs me and sometimes doesn't.

On the other hand, I'm soon off to visit my daughter for a few days and then in May the family has the wedding of my oldest granddaughter to look forward to. I've stocked up on talking books as I love reading but can't see well enough these days. And I have family I love and plenty of good friends. So all in all, I'm not complaining about shingles or post-shingles neuralgia. I'll file them under those little things that are sent to try us.

English riots - a question of poverty and deprivation or crime and punishment?

I'll be 82 in September (2011). So I've seen a fair bit of life. I lived through the second world war. I've been widowed twice. I had cancer twice. I've raised two kids of my own and had a hand in raising three grandchildren.

One thing you learn fairly quickly when you're parenting is that children need discipline and guidance. If they're allowed to run riot, they will. At least, for a time they will. And while they do, they'll hurt themselves or the people around them. I believe that out-of-control behaviour is scary for everyone concerned - the people who're out of control and the people who have to witness that and deal with the consequences.

When people in England turned on their TVs in August 2011 and saw kids running riot in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham and elsewhere, it sparked a big debate about what had gone wrong in English cities. Night after night, youngsters were out on the streets, breaking into shops and other businesses, burning buildings and looting stores. They weren't stealing the necessities of life. They weren't after bread and meat. They were stealing computers, phones, plasma screen TVs and other electronic gadgets along with cigarettes, beer, wine and spirits and the usual street gear preferred by kids - trainers and hooded tops. The more 'ambitious' were looting jewellers as well.

The TV showed the rioters at the outset were mainly black kids and then the white kids joined in when they saw that the police were standing back, watching, doing nothing. To me, it seemed incredible that - as many guessed - the fear of being called racist prevented the police from arresting people who were smashing their way into businesses, looting and committing arson.

But certainly things have changed in England since I was young. Of course there were criminals around in the 30s and 40s and all the decades since. But here were thousands of utterly lawless young people on the rampage across England, burning and looting and smashing like the Barbarians at the sack of Rome.

There were of course older people involved too, mainly people in their 30s, and there was part of the problem. Many in the generation which has parented today's children are themselves lawless and out of control. They've given their kids virtually no discipline and precious little guidance, apart perhaps from the advice to pinch things when they can. There's a whole section of the English population that pours scorn on society, law and order, education and the idea of working for a living. That's no secret and the English and world press have widely discussed the problem of 'feral children' and 'feral parents' in England.

The liberal elite tend to argue that the rioters are a lost generation for whom more should have been done. The core problem, for them, is not that these people are profoundly anti-social and have no concern for others. The problem is that society hasn't given them enough. They should have more benefits, more education, more understanding. That's an awfully one-sided view in my opinion. It entirely leaves out the question of individuals taking responsibility for their own behaviour. One TV report showed a woman leaving a court with her young son - a child of about ten who'd been in court for rioting. She swore and railed at the interviewer speaking to her. The whole problem she said was that the government hadn't done enough for kids: there was nothing for kids to do. The interviewer seemed entirely unable to challenge that view. And yet around the world and throughout history, kids have found plenty of things to do without governments getting involved! That mother was making excuses for her own inability to guide or discipline her child. No surprise then if the child blamed "guvment" for his own thuggish behaviour. But it's preposterous to say kids in England need the government to do more for them. They have free education and, in this case I'm willing to bet, free housing and free food and amenities. That's already a heck of a lot more than a huge percentage of the world's children receive and adults like this mother should have that pointed out to her over and over again. Her son, properly guided by parents, would have plenty to do apart from rioting and stealing. He could take an interest in his education, read, play with friends, use his computer, learn an instrument, sing, play football with friends....there are clearly a thousand activities a healthy kid can do in England. And they don't need to cost much either. It would be no good that mother telling me or my generation that her kid is deprived. We lived our childhood during the war and often didn't have enough to eat. Most of us wouldn't have dreamt of stealing from others. It wasn't a question of what we didn't have. It was a question of what we did have: some proper social values in our heads, put there by parents and teachers.

One interesting report on the trials of rioters gave an indication of where English society has gone wrong in recent decades. A teenager was jailed for a month or two for looting. As he was led from the dock he shouted a very coarse insult at the judge. Nevertheless, he was led away. What should have happened is that the judge should have hauled him back into the dock right there and then and added to his sentence to teach him a lesson. Instead, the child learnt that he can insult a judge without consequence. Liberals may say that's too harsh but in the long run it does the child - and society - a lot of good. It instils respect for others and that has been sadly missing. The same report described the behaviour of a grown woman on hearing her boyfriend sentenced to a few months jail for rioting. She swore, ran out of court to the custody suite where her boyfriend was being held and tried to break in. Security men escorted her out of the court and as she left she kicked over a dustbin, scattering rubbish. Again, she should have been hauled into the dock by the judge there and then and given a fine. Instead - she too learnt that her bad behaviour went unpunished.

Justice needs to be consistent if it is to work. The English courts seem to have woken up to the fact, rather late in the day, that crime needs to be punished. They should now ensure that anti-social behaviour is met with jail sentences especially where it involves any form of violence.

It is true that English society is very unequal. The rich are fabulously rich and the poor are poor. But there are many opportunities for those willing to take them and for those willing to take responsibility for their own lives. The greatest opportunity lies in education, which is free. Many children and parents in the developing world understand the importance of education and would jump at the chance of free primary and secondary education. English kids have that and take it for granted. There needs to be a new emphasis on the importance of education - after that, parents and children can take notice of the opportunity or not. But we should all be challenged - repeatedly challenged - about our behaviour if it's anti-social. Those who choose to be lawless and commit crime should be left in no doubt that their crimes will be punished. The excuse that the government should have "done more" won't wash.

Someone was talking to me the other day about nuclear fall-out shelters. I can't remember who it was offhand but the point being made was that sometime during the Cold War people started thinking about nuclear shelters because politicians and journalists and other people were talking about the possibility that Soviet Russia would drop a nuclear bomb on us.

I remember the Cold War and Suez and John F. Kennedy and that whole period very well. (Elsewhere on this Blog I've written a bit about the Suez Crisis.)

But anyway, I began to think that the whole idea of nuclear shelters probably owed quite a bit to the experience of the British during the war and during the Blitz. After all, it's not very likely that a shelter would protect people from a nuclear bomb. It sounds like an idea based on the triumph of hope over common sense to me...

What I think happened in the Cold War perhaps was that people had this idea of the British taking shelter from German bombs. During the Blitz, of course, people used to scramble to get down into the London Underground when the air raid sirens sounded. I don't suppose my grandchildren would even know what I meant if I used the words "air raid siren" now but during the war we all knew what it meant when that siren went off. Londoners would hurry down to the underground station platforms and sleep there if necessary to avoid nazi bombs. It might have been reassuring to be safe underground during a bombing raid but you wouldn't necessarily know of course if your friends and family were safe and you wouldn't know till the all clear sounded and you came up above ground again if your house was still standing.

I lived in Lancashire during the war and was a child. (I was born in 1929.) We didn't have underground stations there, naturally, so people improvised. Most people just went under their dining table when we heard the bombers fly over. Fat lot of good that would do, but you felt you had to take some sort of shelter. After the war began though our next door neighbours devised a bomb shelter.

They had labradors - big dogs - and had built a huge kennel in their back yard. It wasn't tall enough to stand in but it was long and wide. Once the man of the household - Mr Stuttard - realised we were likely to be bombed by the Luftwaffe (the German air force), he reinforced the kennel's sides and roof and put sandbags all round it. He and his wife had no children so they had room to let my mother, my father and me shelter in the kennel with them and their dogs when bombers flew over. I remember crouching in that kennel during bombing when the nazis were dropping incendiary bombs and hoping to high heaven that the reinforced kennel roof would stop a bomb from killing us all. 

Looking back, a bomb dropped from a plane and exploding on the Stuttards' kennel would more than likely have killed the lot of us instantly. But it felt good to feel we had some kind of shelter, a place to run when we heard the bombers. My father removed part of the fence separating our garden from the yard next door so we could nip through in a hurry when we needed to. Still, I don't suppose the kennel-air-raid-shelter would have been terribly effective. Its main function was probably just to make us feel a bit safer - it was more a psychological help than anything else I imagine. And I suspect the same applies to the idea of the nuclear fallout shelter.

Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Matt Damon, Jude Law - Boyish Film Stars Replaced the Rugged Stars of the 40s and 50s

I'm knocking on a bit - 82 in September - and I don't like much contemporary music or some work that passes for art now, but do I like to see new films. The other week I went to see The King's Speech and thought it was excellent. Helena Bonham-Carter always gives interesting performances and Colin Firth was very good.

But it did get me thinking - again - that today's male film stars are quite different from those I grew up seeing in the cinema. I was chatting to my daughters about this a while ago and they agreed. The thing I notice is that the male film stars today seem far more boyish than the stars of the 40s and 50s. I wondered if that's because I'm so much older now, but Idon't think so.

Think of the old film stars and then the new ones. Actors like Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, John Wayne.

Whether you liked their performances or not, or thought they were great actors or not, you'd have to agree that they were all men - fully grown, adult, mature men. None of them were boys or boyish when they were up there on the cinema screens. Even the less rugged stars like Fred Astaire, David Niven, Dirk Bogarde and Frank Sinatra were undeniably men.

And some of the male actors who came along a bit later on, like Marlon Brando and Richard Burton, were men rather than boys too.

I remember seeing The African Queen when it came out in 1952. I was newly married, living in Washington and was in my early 20s. Bogart's performance as Charlie Allnut seemed quite familiar to me because he was like many of the men I seemed to know, including the man I'd married - men who'd recently fought in a war and won and had somehow retained all their humanity despite being toughened up by danger and fighting.

The male stars we saw in the films in those days were pretty much all like that - whether they played dependable men or dangerous men or even suave, rather pampered men they were all men, not boys.

I suppose that reflected the world that had shaped them - specifically, the second world war.

And I guess that's why today's male stars are different. To me, they seem much more boyish. More hair oil than engine oil, if that makes sense. Think of Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Ryan Phillippe, the two in Brokeback Mountain, Ewan McGregor, Leonardo diCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp. They're all boys compared to Bogart, Mitchum, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster!

Can you imagine a remake of Spartacus with Orlando Bloom or Jude Law rising and saying "I'm Spartacus"? I can't. They're too delicate, too pretty.

Brad Pitt was quite manly in Fight Club but I can't really think of any other young - or youngish - current male stars who could recreate the roles played by the classic film stars. Harvey Keitel is one of the few rugged male actors we've seen in recent years. (Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman were wonderful in their heyday but they've become aging pussycats sending themselves up, which is amusing I suppose, but to me they don't match the legendary stars.)

Now, all this may be partly because I'm so much older - perhaps that's why the newer stars look like boys to me. But I don't think so. I think there's just a fashion for rather soft-looking, sensitive-looking  male actors whereas in my day the fashion was for tougher male film stars.

The reason I think it's a real change and not just the way I see actors is that I don't see a huge difference in the female stars getting cast in films now. True, I did prefer the style and the beauty of the older stars - Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren. I did think they were very beautiful women. But there are plenty of beautiful actresses now too and they don't seem less womanly than the screen legends. They don't seem like 'girls.' Actresses like Sigourney Weaver, Sharon Stone, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Rene Zellweger, Penelope Cruz, Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron and Helena Bonham-Carter don't seem less mature than their counterparts in earlier decades. (They do tend to go out in public, some of them, looking less than their film-star best which is a shame. As Joan Collins once said, the public don't need actresses to look like the girl next door - the girl next door fills that role already.)

Still, that's how this elderly film fan sees the young male film stars today. Much more boy than man, most of them.

I particularly noticed this in the film Titanic. Leonardo diCaprio was famously cast opposite Kate Winslet as the leading man and love interest. I don't much like Kate Winslet as an actress. She seems very smug and there's just something about her face and expressions that I don't usually find terribly watchable. But what struck me was that, when I looked at her with DiCaprio, she seemed like she could be his mum! Here was this rather robust, mumsy looking woman cast opposite this pretty young boy who seemed far too young for her. You could never have felt that if she'd she been playing opposite an actor like a young Humphrey Bogart or Kirk Douglas! For my money you only have to glance at the male stars of the 40s and 50s and their counterparts today to sort the men from the boys...

Christmas Alone at 81? I'll Still Enjoy It.

The British never used to get bothered by snowfalls in winter. We just expected it. Growing up in Lancashire in the 30s and 40s I saw quite a few cold winters and whenever it snowed we just got on with things. There weren't snow ploughs to clear the roads so if the snow was deep you just had to stay in your home. One year after the start of the war - probably January or February 1940 or it might have been 1941, we had really heavy snow. I was ten or eleven and quite excited because I couldn't get the bus to school for days. The snow was so deep it buried the hedges. The snowdrifts were higher than I was tall. If I'd gone outside it would have just about covered me from head to toe! There was no option but to wait till it all thawed. We had a coal fire in the sitting room. Apart from that there was no heating in the house. My father, mother and I wold huddle round the fire during the day and rather dread going up to bed at night. The bedrooms were so cold there was ice on the inside of the windows. Because the electricity was off we used storm lamps from the late afternoon when it got dark. These were just glass lanterns with a wick and flame inside. They didn't give too much light really and were meant for use outdoors. I remember during my childhood seeing shepherds out in the fields going to check on ewes lambing.
My mother cooked on the stove next to the fire. It was OK, but hard to control - the temperature was just given by the heat of the coal fire.
We didn't get out to the shops for some days but war rations were in force so we weren't missing much. My mother had some preserves, milk, eggs and cured meat in the pantry so that was our diet while we snowed in. And cups of hot tea of course.

Now I've lived in Surrey for decades and when my kids were growing up they enjoyed the snow each winter. My husband and I usually set and lit the coal fires in the house but the girls soon learnt to do it too. They'd spread out yesterday's newspaper on the floor, fold it over and over to make something like a flat paper tube, tie it in knots and use it underneath dry twigs - kindling wood - to light the fire. We had a coal bunker outside where you'd go and put the shovel in the coal-hole at the bottom of the bunker to draw coal out, put it in the coal bucket and lug it inside.

I was talking about snow at Christmas because this year - 2010 - there's been so much travel disruption because of snow. The TV and radio have been reporting passengers at Heathrow airport and other British airports whose flights are cancelled so queues and queues of people can't get away on holiday for Christmas. That must be very upsetting for those who work all year and planned to spend Christmas with friends or family. The snow has caused a lot of trouble on the roads too even though these days there are services supposed to be ready with snow ploughs, grit and salt.

I'm hoping to spend Christmas with my daughter in London and her family. My son-in-law should drive down from London to pick me up on the 23rd of December so I've been listening to the weather forecast trying to figure out if he'll be able to drive or not. At 81, you have to figure you haven't got too many Chirstmases left  (maybe another 10 - I hope!) so I hope to get up to London to be with them.

I told my other daughter, who lives inFrance, that I've bought a pizza and a bottle of champagne so if the snow prevents me travelling to London at the last moment then I'll have Christmas on my own and enjoy it nevertheless! I'm lucky to have some very good friends though - and that's one of the most important things to do as you get older - be a good friend to others and look after your friendships - and two of my friends have said if I get 'stranded' here in Surrey by the snow they'll find a way to collect me and I can spend Christmas with them and their families. However it turns out, it'll be OK.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to make 18 mince pies to take up to London with me. I found a book on my bookshelves called Christmas Made Easy with a recipe for Unbelievably Easy Mince Pies. I started to make them. You don't use any liquid for the pastry, just butter, flour and sugar. You're meant to 'knead the pastry mixture into a ball' but it all fell apart in crumbs. I added a bit of liquid but that didn't help much. I'm going to press the pastry into the baking tin anyway, add the mincemeat and hope for the best.

While I was fiddling around with the recipe and the pastry my daughter called. I told her the recipe wasn's working. "It certainly isn't unbelievable easy" I told her. "Yes it is" she said. "You were warned it was unbelievable..."

Then my new Kurdish neighbour called round. I've met her and her husband a couple of times now. They seem very pleasant but I didn't give them a Christmas card as I didn't know if Kurds celebrate Christmas, or if some do and some don't. It's silly, but it can be awkward asking these days. It shouldn't be - these things are interesting. She has what I think is a red caste mark? on her forehead and doesn't drink so I had the idea she wouldn't celebrate Cristmas. Anyway, she presented me with a long blue tin of Belgian biscuits and a Christmas card and wished me a Happy Christmas. So either she does celebrate Christmas - or she doesn't but correctly assumed I do. I'll give her and her husband a Christmas card and small gift now and when I know them a bit better maybe I'll get the opportunity to ask them about their traditions and culture.

Macular Degeneration: Becoming Partially Sighted in Old Age

I had cataract surgery early this year (2010.) I was pleased with the operations - I had both eyes done - and my sight improved. I had to pay for the surgery privately as the National Health Service told me I'd have to wait two years. At my time of life, two years is too long. When you see some of the things the NHS spends its money on it does make you wonder why people in their 80s who've paid taxes and national insurance for decades can't get two simple eye operations when they need them.

Anyway, my sight did improve for a while. I'm 81 though and there's only so much an eye surgeon can do with weary old eyes. Throughout this year my sight has got steadily worse as a result of age-related macular degeneration (the one that can't be cured.) I was referred to an eye clinic and then a pleasant women came to my home to advise me about lighting and other things that might help. I was sent two pairs of hi-tech glasses - one pair for looking at the television and objects further away and one pair for reading. All my life I've loved reading and writing so the fact that they're both getting hard to do is quite difficult to accept. Being told to stop driving was difficult but at least I could still watch films fairly easily, read books, send and receive emails and write this. At least on the computer you can switch the text to large size which is a help.

Yesterday, another woman called round and she gave me a fold-up white stick. It was my fault really because I'd told her that sometimes when I cross a road I have trouble seeing if there's a car coming. Out came the white stick and she advised me to keep it in my handbag so it's always handy if I go into town. I don't like having a white stick in my possession - it makes me feel sort of pigeonholed as an invalid - but I'll just have to get used to it. I've been registered as partially sighted too so there's no getting away from the fact that my sight is not as good as it was up until a couple of years ago. Blindness is a terrible thought for anyone who takes their good eyesight for granted but it's pretty worrying when you find your sight actually progressively failing. You have no way of knowing how fast it'll deteriorate or if you'll hang on to at least a measure of sight.

The woman who came this week also told me I can apply for an Attendance Allowance. It wasn't really clear to me what that means or whether it's for partially sighted people or people with any disability but I think it's to help a bit with things like taxis because I can't drive any more. Or perhaps to have someone come and help me with my shopping because the writing's often so tiny on products that I can't always see what I'm buying. I feel a bit daft asking some young person in Sainsburys to look at a packet and tell me what's in it! Anyway, I suppose someone will explain how I apply for the allowance and what exactly it's to be used for.

One of my daughters has advised me to start getting used to radio and talking books as much as the TV, newspapers and proper books. I suppose that's not a bad idea. I like to see the news on TV and I've always liked spending Sunday reading all the Sunday papers, usually lying on the carpet with them spread out all around me. But it's probably time to make a bit of a transition and get used to hearing the news on the radio.

There's not to recommend about getting older really. I don't know about getting wiser but you certainly start to get a bit worn and creaky after 80. Some chap, I can't remember who it was offhand, said real old age starts at 80. I'll be 82 in September 2011. So far, I tend to agree with him. One of the clichés about ageing is that it's not for softies. I certainly agree with that. Another is that getting old is better than the alternative. For now, I agree with that too!