Carol Hedges's Blog, page 39

The PINK SOFA Welcomes Bev Spicer

Bev SpicerBev Spicer is another of those lovely writers that I met since joining Twitter last August. Bev currently lives in France (the PINK SOFA is wooden with jealousy) with her family. She is a prolific writer and, as you will see, has had some VERY interesting jobs. I'm sure she will be delighted to talk about them later. In honour of Bev's visit, there are croissants and bowls of coffee on the coffee table and the PINK SOFA has tricolour ribbons tied round its legs and is humming the Marseillaise. So, Bev, over to you...


''Thank you Carol for letting me sprawl on your sofa. I would love to leave my mark, but that might not be socially acceptable to your next guest. (The PINK SOFA is used to the errant behaviour of its guests, so would not mind in the slightest) Well, I was the girl that was never chased in the playground. I hung around, but no one tried to catch me. In a game of kiss chase, it was the boys who were screaming. Between the ages of ten to thirteen I was designed to repulse. My grandmother insisted on dressing me in Jaeger dresses and designer fur-trimmed coats. The genteel assistants must have been horrified to see their beautifully cut clothes on an irregularly shaped potato of a girl with gappy teeth and piggy eyes.
I did not realise I was a 'minger' at the time. But I did have a great deal of time on my hands, while my peers were out at parties having fun and snogging boys (so they claimed). So I wrote stories for my sisters. I don't remember most of them, but I do remember one. And I recall my youngest sister begging me to write the next instalment so she could find out what happened.
Time moved on. I lost the pounds and gained a less frightening smile, becoming if not a swan, then a passable goose. I spent a lot of time travelling and worked as a secretary for a posh bin-bag company, a croupier for Playboy, a newly qualified and easily distracted secondary school teacher, a conscientious university lecturer and an extremely over-worked and under-paid examiner for Cambridge Exams.

Then, I remembered that I quite liked to write. So, having produced what I mistakenly believed to be a finished book, I foolishly sent it off to be rejected by a selection of literary agents. When I had completed my third book, and learned about editing, I didn't want to spend months waiting for a junior agent to flick through a few pages and send me a polite stock email, so I took the plunge and published Bunny on a Bike, on Kindle, (a humorous memoir of my time at Playboy).
 I followed this up with a mystery/psychological drama: My Grandfather's Eyes, which tells the story of  Alex Crane, a flawed heroine who discovers a family history that shocks her and reveals a secret she had subconsciously been aware of in childhood recollections and dreams


There was no stopping me after that. I wrote another mystery/family drama: A Good Day for Jumping with a complex plot and intriguing characters who share a secret past. And, because I so enjoyed Bunny on a Bike, I have just completed and published its prequel: One Summer in France, based on the study break I spent with my best pal in the south of France while enrolled on a language course at university. That's the story so far.

Bev, on holiday recently. The bottle contains water. She says.
I have two more completed novels on my desk to work on, and another couple under my pillow and several more hovering in the space between my ears. Quite an achievement for someone who started out as a cabbage-patch child-model for Jaeger!

Thank you so much, Bev. What an amazing and very impressive story!! Bev will be staying around to answer any questions and chat, so do stick around.

If you have to go, check out Bev's blog: http://baspicer.blogspot.fr  where there are direct links to her books  PLEASE NOTE: Today (Sat) is the last day of Bev's FREE PROMO on One Summer in France!!! The PINK SOFA also recommends that you read her blog post for the 27th April. 

You can Tweet Bev @BevSpice
All Bev's books are available on Amazon as ebooks.

There's A Party - But Not Here!

If you've reached my blog via the usual links.....you need to go to fb.me/2cisSljVw

That's where the party is ...just for this week!

Sock and Awe

The latest council folly. Me posing.

A vexed week at Hedges Towers. One of BH's favourite socks has gone missing. It has been missing for two weeks now. The odd thing is that both of us swear blind that we have actually spotted the sock several times and in completely different places in the house. Also we have separately placed it in prominent positions so that it can be picked up and reunited with its grieving other. But every time, it eludes capture. It a mystery. The sock has obviously decided to go and live on its own, footloose and fancy free, which only confirms that life on earth exists in many forms, some of which we have barely begun to comprehend.

Meanwhile, in the light of their intransigent attitude re: our Playing Fields, and the subsequent failure of my sarcasmectomy I have suggested to our beloved Town Council that they should consider re-twinning us with somewhere in North Korea rather than the French town of Jambon-sur-Pain, or whatever it is called. Didn't go down well. Can't understand why. The latest wheeze, dreamed up by a young District councillor, has been to create a series of cycle lanes in one of the popular parks. He doesn't drive, needless to say.

On right: the Roman Wall - now unprotectedNow, you and I know the way to do this is to get a pot of paint and someone with a steady hand and draw a line along the path. Simples. The way the council has done it is to dig up the whole path, and then relay it with a very nasty gritty base and ugly ramps that the elderly, disabled, and those with mobility scooters struggle to surmount. It has cost a fortune and has totally spoiled the look of large sections of what was perfectly adequate pathway.
Halfway through Project Pointless, they ran out of money, so the white fake marble edging doesn't go all the whole way along.

OK, it is all too easy to mock -  hey, see how I have just done it for the last two paragraphs without breaking a sweat, but in these recessionary times, wasting thousand and thousands of pounds of our money on this folly beggars belief and credibility.
Whatever. Needless to say BH and I refuse to be told by some uppity non-mandated wet-behind-the-ears legacy-hunting quisling with more ideology than brains which side of the path we must walk on, so we deliberately walk along the cycle path side, as we always did before it was spoiled. In the four months we have been doing this, we have only ever encountered a single cyclist.

The PINK SOFA Welcomes Mandy K James

Mandy K James
Mandy K James is one of the first writers THE PINK SOFA got to know when it first stuck one elegantly carved wooden leg into the Twitter pool last August. She has a rumbustious sense of fun, and sparkling repartee, but is also a caring and loyal friend, supporting other writers and cheering them on from the sidelines. Since THE PINK SOFA asked her its questions about her life and her writing influences, she has successfully launched her latest book, A Stitch In Time, with the wonderfully named Choc Lit, and is currently working on her next book for them. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome her to THE PINK SOFA and there is fizzy French wine and a selection of nice French cheeses on the coffee table to celebrate.

So, Mandy, what sort of books do you write?
Contemporary women's fiction with an element of suspense.

What kick started your writing career?
I have always written  ..well not always, obviously, but since I was about 8. I just loved making up stories and started my first novel in 2001. It was very hard to do alongside a full-time teaching career, but I kept plugging away. I gave up teaching in 2008 and cracked on with what was to be my first published novel, an ebook called Righteous Exposure. I also had lots of short stories published around that time too.

What were your favourite childhood books and why?
Very early on it was all of Enid Blyton's as they were full of adventure and excitement. Later, when I was about 13 it was The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings for similar reasons, but particularly because I felt a real connection to the characters. I really cared about what would happen to them all for the first time I suppose. Tolkien is such a beautiful writer also; I felt I actually could see 'Middle'Earth'.

What writers do you most admire today (can be classical) and why?
Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Steven King, Dean Koontz, the list is very long. Why? Most of these have a moral message or some meaning in their writing. I don't read nearly enough now, as I tend to be too caught up in writing. But the writer I enjoy most still has to be Dean Koontz. His writing style is just effortless, and he can paint a picture with just a few words. Most writers would need a few pages, also there is always an identifiable baddie and he/she gets his just desserts. I try to do the same in my novels.

Talk to us about your writing process - how do you plan, have a set number of words each day, where do you write?
I am a pantster. I have the bare bones of a story and jot these down, sometimes in bullet points. Then I have a title - can't write without that! Then I just let the characters do the work. I love writing because I'm entertained as I write - I never know what's coming next! I like to write at least 2,000 words each day and usually manage it. I don't have a special writing room or shed, but would love to have one in the future.

From brain to draft - what's your time span?

It varies. My new novel, a time-travelling romantic comedy A Stitch In Time was written in 6 weeks (first draft) but normally around three to four months. When I was teaching, sometimes a year.

What part of the writing process do you find challenging and why?
Mandy's new bookI often get stuck around 30,000 words. I have heard most writers do. (THE PINK SOFA has been known to get stuck 4 lines in...) It's annoying because I have to leave it for a while and think my way round the problem. It's at this point that I worry that I'll have to scrap the lot because it's a load of old pants! Usually it isn't, and I finish it in the end ... usually.

What was your worst experience?
I think the number of rejections over the years. No matter how much you tell yourself that it is just one agent's opinion etc it does tend to punch a big hole in your confidence. The main thing is not to give up, even though you want to.

And your finest?
Getting the offer of a contract from the wonderful Choc Lit Publishing in May of last year. And now seeing my book A Stitch in Time actually in bookshops and online.

A Stitch in Time is available on Amazon.co.uk as both book and ebook.

Visit Mandy's blog: http://mandykjameswrites.blogspot.com/    Tweet her: @akjames61
 Facebook: Mandy James Author Page

Thanks, Mandy! Mandy will be staying around to chat, so do dig into the cheese and wine and ask her some more questions.

A Highly Regrettable Incident At Sainsbury's

A roller-coaster week at Hedges Towers.  It started with an incident of possible criminal activity at our local supermarket - though in his defence, BH pleads accidental error of judgement and mitigating circumstances. We were doing the weekend shopping at the time. Usually BH does this on his own because he says that whenever I accompany him, off-list items find their way into the trolley, although I claim that they would have been on the list had I known, when drawing it up, of their existence.

Be that as it may and it was, I was scouting round for extra stuff, when I noticed BH standing very close to a trolley parked in the veg aisle. He was staring fixedly at the contents. Then he bent down and reached in. At which point the owner of the trolley arrived, gave him a 'what the hell?' look, and wheeled it swiftly away. There subsequently ensued the following exchange:

Me:  What on earth were you doing?
BH: I thought it was one of those reduced trolleys.
Me: They don't do reduced trolleys in Sainsbury's.
BH: Don't they? I thought they did. It had some good bargains. There were some nice carrots.
Me: But it was that man's trolley.
BH: (peers at items) Are those on the list?
Me: (firmly) You are in no position to query anything.

Let it be stated that two seconds later, we were both leaning against the meat counter helpless with laughter, and being given a very wide berth by passing customers. I have mentally stored the incident up to use as ammo in future negotiations, a tactic I highly recommend.

Meanwhile in the parallel world to yours, i.e. the one which is inhabited by me, we have had some 'developments'. The decision on our Town Green application has been put on hold pending the outcome of an appeal on a previous and very similar case to ours called the Barkas Case. Oh unconfined joy! As the options were: nope or wait, we are happy to settle for wait, as it gives us legal threat lines when our beloved Town Council, having decided to make economies by cutting their integrity and accountability budget altogether, decides to have another go at our playing field.


Which they will. They have now had to withdraw their flawed planning application for the second time, thanks to a devastatingly effective and pretty well continuous email campaign. Hahaha. There must be staff in that Planning Department who are only now dusting themselves down and emerging out of hiding. Magic Finger Hedges, they call me. Well no, that is probably NOT what they call me, but hey, it worked. (Tip for anybody running a similar campaign against a local council: always copy the Chief Exec, the Head of Planning, the Monitoring Officer, plus any supportive Councillors into anything you send to minions. It worries them. A lot.)

Which makes me wonder: Local Government machinations... corrupt councillors ... is there perhaps a book in all this? The Vacant Casualty springs to mind as a possible title... what do you think?



Apropos of nothing ... I was sent this great cartoon by a fellow children's author who'd recently discovered my 'Spy Girl' series. Thanks, Richard Hardie.

The PINK SOFA Welcomes Paul Emanuelli

Paul Emanuelli
Paul Emanuelli is one of that lovely group of writers I've had the great good fortune to meet via Twitter. Paul is the author of Avon Street - a historical novel set in Bath in the 1850's. The PINK SOFA is happy to say it has read the book, and recommends it highly! In honour of Paul's visit, and in an effort to be snack symmetric, there is a Victoria Sponge cake on the coffee table. Awaiting the outcome of its own historical novel, set in the 1860's, the PINK SOFA questioned Paul about being a historical writer, and why the Victorian period particularly appealed to him. This is what he replied:

'' A big Thank You to Carol for inviting me to sit on her PINK SOFA for a while and for asking me some questions that really made me think. I should begin by telling you a little bit about myself. II was born in Stoke-on-Trent, of Welsh parents and Italian grandparents. Most of  the jobs I've ever done have involved writing, but mainly reports, studies and factual documents. For far too long I thought of creative writing as something other people did. It seemed a big step to say, 'I want to be a writer,' let alone, 'I am a writer.'  Though I'd always told myself that one day I would write a novel, reality always seemed to intervene, and it wasn't until later in life that I started night-classes in creative writing and began writing short stories. My first novel, Avon Street grew out of one of them.

I've always loved history, but until Carol asked, 'why?' I'd always taken it for granted. Many people think of history as being about kings and queens, great events, battles and empires. And of course, endless lists of dates. But what I love about history is the lives of 'ordinary' people and trying to imagine what it would have been like to have lived in another time. People as far back as the Neolithic age drew pictures on cave walls, carved animals from bones - they made art, communicated, left signs that they had been here for a moment in time. They had no writing, but you're left wondering - were they really very different to us? Maybe their emotions and feelings, hopes and fears were much like ours.

An author owes a lot to their readers. Reading novels takes time, and a writer has to earn that time by creating characters that readers will care about, and devising a plot that will make them want to turn the page. But the historical novel also asks the reader to ignore everything around them and to imagine that they are living in another time. For a writer, that's where the research comes in. A writer has to understand what life was like in another time - fashions, transport, medicine, work, education, politics, crime and a host of other things. But as a novelist they also have to ensure that they include just the right amount of historical detail in the novel - too little and it doesn't feel real, too much and it becomes a history lecture.

The Victorian era particularly appeals to me because we know so much about it and because perhaps more that any other era it mirrors our modern world. It was an era of great change and the first age of consumerism. The Industrial Revolution was in some ways the forerunner of our own Technological Revolution. New discoveries and inventions revolutionized manufacturing processes. Railways and steamships made travel faster and cheaper, rapidly shrinking the world. And it was the age of popular novels, which allow us, perhaps for the first time a real glimpse into the lives of 'ordinary ' people.
Avon Street
Avon Street is set in Bath in 1850. It's a city whose image is defined even today by the novels of Jane Austen. But when writing it, I wanted to explore the darker side of the city that Jane Austen only ever hinted at - to go behind the Georgian facades, to show the streets of a city, where wealth and elegance were never far from poverty and squalor.

I won't tell you too much about the book, in the hope you might read it, but it revolves around a wealthy man who loses everything and has to do battle with a ruthless criminal gang who run the poorer quarters of the city. It's about the search for trust among the people who offer to help him (an actress, a sailor a thief and a priest) each of whom has their own secrets. And most importantly, it's about the choices people make and how those decisions shape who they become. Much of the book is based on real events, locations and people, but with a few fictional twists that I hope will keep the reader turning the pages and guessing to the end.''

Avon Street (highly recommended by THE PINK SOFA) can be found at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avon-Street-M... -
Emanuelli/dp/0752465546/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avon-Street-V... kin.title 0

Contact Paul via his blog: http://unpublishedwriterblog.wordpres... or on Twitter: @UnpubWrites

Paul is going to stay around to answer your questions, so while he pours the tea and arranges the Victoria Sponge decorously on the cake stand, why not take a seat and have a chat.....

Carmageddon

It's been a frustrating week at Hedges Towers. BH's car is playing up again. It is an Italian car, and so was built for the wide open Italian roads, where the sun shines down, and the breeze gently blows and it bowls along at speed, with Volare by Dean Martin on the sound system. What it gets instead is rain, snow, slush and potholes you could go caving in.

The car expresses its dissatisfaction by continually going wrong, and informing us in no uncertain terms of how it is feeling. Every time we set off, a series of alerts come up on the dashboard: Rear left sidelight not working, we are informed. Motor control system failure, we are told. Front headlight not working. And so on and so on. And that's on top of the Possible ice on the road and other potential weather hazards that it feels it has to warn us about. Why it can't just come straight out with it and say: I hate this sodding country, I do not know, but its discontent is costing us enough to keep a small African township in food for a year.

The other way the car lets us know it is unhappy is via the parking sensor. Every time BH backs it into a parking space, or up the drive, a small squat evil Italian Mama clad in black waves her gnarled finger and shouts: No.. No..NONONONO! Or at least that's what it sounds like. My friend E has a similar problem. Her car is one of those people carriers (she has 3 kids and a dog) and it has parking sensors on all sides. It is like being attacked by a trio of smurf castrati.

A further problem with E's car is the colour: it is metallic silver, like practically every car on the road nowadays, which means whenever we go out, we almost always lose it in some multi-storey car park. The time we have wasted going from floor to floor, suddenly locating it, but then realizing at the last minute that it is not hers. We have even resorted to walking up and down pressing the key fob in the vain hope that it will beep and let us know where it is hiding - because honestly, that is what it feels like at times. The conspiracy of cars. I'm sure it exists.

Annie RoseMy car on the other hand, is French and so it couldn't give a damn. You kerb it, or park it askew, or scrape it along something, it just shrugs and goes tant pis. It also has this habit of taking on other cars, especially   'baby on board' landcruisermobiles driven (badly) by the blonde yummy mummies who live in my town. These behemoths are completely unsuitable for the narrowish streets and my 2CV hates them. Whenever we get into a confrontation on a bridge or up a hill, it simply refuses to go into reverse. Just waits, sneering with Gallic insouciance, until the other car is forced to back down. Nothing I can do, honest.

We are thinking of putting my car up as a candidate in the next local elections, on the basis that it has no political affiliations, it knows no developers, you can't bribe it and it does no deliberate harm to anybody. After all, if Caligula could make his horse a consul, I don't see why my car couldn't be a councillor.
Do you?

Seeing Red At Waitrose

A thought-provoking week at Hedges Towers, which began with my best friend E having one of those encounters that keeps the iron of revolt firmly embedded in my soul. She was queuing at the checkout in Waitrose with her lovely young daughter, who has Downs. Because daughter does not do waiting patiently, E with permission from the understanding checkout staff, always gives her a small handful of those green counters to post in the Community Matters slots while she bags and pays.

She had just handed over the counters when one of the hard-faced middle-aged women we refer to locally as ''Tory wives'', the sort whose husbands think they own this town and us, tapped her on the shoulder and informed her coldly that her child was only allowed ONE green counter. Now E is a Canadian with a tongue that could remove paint from walls, but as she said, 'It was after school and the store was full of kids.'

So she took a deep breath, called daughter over, and proceeded to prize the green counters, one by one from her reluctant fingers. By the end of the exercise, daughter was sobbing, the queue had reached epic proportions, and Tory wife was so red and rigid you could have used her to stop traffic. This says all you need to know about my town, and explains why, despite losing our Town Green application, we continue to fight for our green space, and our beloved snails.

Meanwhile closer to home, I decided BH needed a new aftershave as the one he wears is getting on my nerves. Ever mindful of the Estee Lauder Youth Dew Incident*, decided to wait until the weekend, when he was around to test drive products. (*This was the infamous Christmas present that I was given quite early on in our marriage, because a girl where he worked wore it and he thought it smelled very nice. On her, maybe. On me it smelled like week old cat litter. Money completely wasted but hey, a lesson usefully learned.)

Arriving at John Lewis on Saturday, I headed straight for the 'Men's fragrances' a place BH dreads almost as much as a visit to the dentist - apparently it's the word 'fragrances' coupled with the scary ladies armed with bottles, fixed smiles and slightly more teeth than expected - and spent a happy time getting various strips of card sprayed before meeting BH outside the coffee place. Over coffee, persuaded him to sniff, smell and critique the various colognes. He said they all smelled exactly the same and he didn't like any of them. Just as well, as I'd forgotten which one was which anyway. And they all seemed to cost a ridiculous amount of money in the first place.

So I have thrown the elderly bottle of aftershave away, leaving BH to smell of BH, which is actually quite nice for a change. See, that's another good thing about strolling gently towards one's dotage: there are so many things you no longer need: expensive cologne, eyelash curlers, mini hair-straighteners, eyebrow threading kits, waxing strips, designer sunglasses, fake tan. The older I get, the more low maintenance I become. Nowadays I just check I'm not still in my slippers, can remember my name and destination, and I'm good to go.

The PINK SOFA Welcomes Catharine Withenay

Catharine Withenay

Catharine Withenay is a recent Twitter friend. We linked up when she used a conversation I was having with someone else as the basis of a very clever blog post. So when The PINK SOFA heard that her memoirs of her life in Zambia: In The Shade Of The Mulberry Tree was to be published, an invitation was soon winging its way. In honour of Catharine's visit, there is chikanda, nshima and sadza on the coffee table for everybody to try. Don't know what it is? As Catharine, she'll tell you all about it. So, without further ado, it's over to my guest:

''How wonderful to sit on your squishy PINK SOFA! ... all I need is glorious sunshine and I'm sorted for the day. A sofa was something that I missed when we first arrived in Zambia. It was about four months before we got one. Until then we had some cheap plastic garden chairs that slid over the concrete floor and one uncomfortable wooden chair with a foam cushion that might have well not existed. Somehow I still managed to breastfeed my daughter in that time.

So let me tell you a little about why and what I write. Moving to Zambia in 2003 was a life-changing experience. I never wanted to go, but my husband is a paediatrician, had done a Diploma in Hygeine and Tropical Medicine and the PhD was his next step. At the time we moved, my son was 2.5 years old, my daughter just over 7 months. I was petrified as to what would happen!

I ended up staying there four years and when I got back to the UK my book almost wrote itself. By then the children were at school and since I was living in a new part of the UK (new to me) I had no friends and plenty of time to write. So why so long to publish? Well, partly because writing isn't simply sitting in front of a computer screen and typing. The first draft is easy, the difficult bit is editing. After trying a few agents, I decided to self-publish.

Memoir is a difficult genre to sell to agents and publishers. It is neither fact nor fiction and in general their memoir budget is taken up by celebrities. (Boring. They all end up in Oxfam Book shops.) But I find other people's lives are interesting: even seemingly 'normal' lives have a tale to tell. My life is not really different from thousands of others, bringing up children and trailing their spouses where the jobs go. But, in fairness, most people don't find themselves trying to emigrate having lost their passports ...

Catharine's memoirs of ZambiaZambia offered so many challenges to the naive expat! The currency needed dividing by 7,500 in order for me to understand it in UK £ sterling. I had to employ a maid (I'd never employed anyone before but it would have been very strange for the white lady not to have one). I had to develop a skill in bartering, which I'm not sure I ever mastered! All together I had a very steep learning curve, much of which I share in the book.

My husband's medical research was into malnutrition and the immune system. Malnutrition is a big issue in developing countries, as there are many people with little or no money and who scrape around for food. Throw in the spectre of HIV/AIDS which is ravaging sub-Saharan Africa and there are many many children who have slim chances in life. I met and worked with international aid workers and it is shocking to know that so many children remain without food and education. I was delighted to witness a rural project that tried to deal with both: feeding lunch to every child that came to school. Unsurprisingly, their education, health and weight improved!''

In the Shade of the Mulberry Tree  : Organising a husband, toddler and babe in arms, three suitcases, two rucksacks, a pram and a travel cot onto a plane ready for a new life in Zambia is complicated enough. Given Catharine's fear of malaria and tropical diseases and the anxieties of moving beyond the reach of friends and family, she wonders how she was persuaded to move at all. The, just as they approach the airport, it appears that they don't have their passports.

In her debut book, Catharine chronicles her first year living abroad as an expat wife. Nothing is simple, from buying furniture to getting a haircut. As she copes with motherhood and the injustices of poverty and healthcare in Zambia, she wonders: could she ever come to call this pace home?

In the Shade Of The Mulberry Tree is available on Amazon.co.uk/Amazon.com

Follow Catherine on : Twitter @c_withanay,  www.facebook.com/CatharineWithenayWriter, www.catharinbewithenay.com

Whoah - what an amazing adventure! Thanks Catharine, the PINK SOFA has really enjoyed hearing about your book ... and is looking forward to trying the Zambian food. Tuck in people... Catharine will be staying around to chat.

Barking At The Bank

 I left them around here somewhere...A vexatious week at Hedges Towers. Cat A is definitely losing his marbles. He doesn't like being left alone, especially if I'm doing something while he's awake. He seems to need constant reassurance and follows me wherever I go (yes, there too). It's like having a toddler, only not. I'm actually typing this with him on my lap, where he is currently happiest.

He has also started waking up at night, and wondering round the house looking for me. Given that he is 16.5 years old and has bad cataracts, this is not a smart move. I am awoken by distressed miaowing and the sound of cat bumping into walls. So then I have to get up, rescue him, take him downstairs and feed him biscuits, after which I settle him down again under the radiator where he sleeps. It's a TOTAL pain, but he's an old cat and we've had him a long time, and someone has to be there for him.

Which meant we were pretty tired by the end of the week, when Beloved Husband and I went into town to close his dormant bank savings account which was earning zero interest whatsoever. He has to be physically there because I, despite being married to him for 36 years, and in full possession of every identity document of his that you could shake a stick at, am not now allowed to open or close or do anything without his actual presence, thank you, even though I apparently own 60% of the Bank.

We both think it's preposterous and a waste of our time. Especially as we used to be able to open and close accounts for each other, and we have a joint account there anyway. So, picture the scene therefore: It's Saturday morning. We are knackered, thanks to insomniac cat. We are cross. We have heavy colds. We are fed up with stupid bank protocols. What followed was something Samuel Beckett would not have been ashamed to own. As I recall, it went like this:

BH: You don't need to stay with me.
Me: Really? Are you sure?
BH: I can manage perfectly well. You go and wait over there.
Me: Over here? OK. I'll wait.
Young Female Bank Person: So Mr Hedges, what is the name of the savings account?
BH: I don't know. It's just a savings account.
YFBP: I need the actual type of account.
BH: Oh for goodness sake. (calls) What's the name of the account?
Me: I thought you told me to wait over here.
BH: I don't know the name of the account.
Me: You said you could manage.
BH: I could, only I don't know the name of the account.
Me: So you want me to come over there now?
BH: Yes.
Me: You don't want me to wait over here?
BH: No.
YFBP: (smiling rather too brightly) Right. Good. Let's start again...

That was pretty much as good as it got. We agreed afterwards that we'd never made it through a bank visit quite so speedily before. Bank Person couldn't get rid of us fast enough. None of that 'while you're here ..'' stuff that usually heralds them attempting to flog you naff insurance. It was: Pretend to smile, press the buttons, print the paperwork, please please go away now. Grumpy Old Sods. It's an art. We are thinking of hiring ourselves out to other bank customers.

See - every now and then being old has its advantages, and we need all the advantages we can get as neither of us are getting any younger. Certainly we're not getting any saner. Quite the opposite. And I notice that we oldies are constantly being referred to in the media as 'a burden' and 'a drain on resources' and an 'elderly time-bomb'. Makes me wonder, when I reach what Shakespeare so vividly describes as 'Second childishness and mere oblivion/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything'' whether there will be somebody there for me to give me biscuits in the middle of the night and let me sleep under the radiator. I do hope so.