"That's right, Mrs. J., of course the devil has a sideboard"

"Time for your medication!"

I haven't thought a lot about the end of my days, but speaking purely statistically it is likely to come in some kind of institutional care, whether a hospice, a care home or sheltered accommodation. And where old folk are gathered, there is encouragement for them to come together and share memories. Thinking of my parents' generation, that meant swapping punchlines from ITMA, and singing along to Vera Lynn or Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I am of a generation that doesn't "get" ITMA but can recite the dead parrot sketch, and knows that the ultimate answer to the ultimate question is 42. All together in the Day Room, I suppose we'll be cracking jokes about, "Not the comfy chair!" while our care assistants exchange looks of indulgent incomprehension. What are they going to think of us, though, when we all start to sing along to Bohemian Rhapsody?

I hope I am there when the circle of wrinklies launches into a tuneless but enthusiastic rendition of, "God save the Queen. The fascist regime", banging their heads against their Zimmer frames and gobbing into their cupasoups.

Blinking cursors

For the third (and, for the moment, final) post about the naked evils of word processing, I will rant about the cursor. There it sits, every time you pause, doing the equivalent of drumming its fingers on the table in impatience at having to wait for you. It never gets tired, never sleeps, just sits there blinking and winking and somehow making you feel very inadequate and slow. So you rush into typing the first thing that comes into your head without thinking too clearly about it, and bingo, you've proved the cursor right - you really are stupid.

There, I've just done it.

Cut and paste

Another thing about word processing (I am hitting a trend here) is the facility to cut and paste, and again it is affecting the way we think and learn. We don't look things up, read around, understand and then express something, but instead we find the first answer in Google and then cut and paste it undigested into whatever we are writing, bypassing any need to absorb and understand it, let alone express it in our own words.

In higher education nowadays, students are taught how to avoid plagiarism by learning how to paraphrase instead of pasting unchanged text into their essays. Note that they are not encouraged to understand and absorb an idea, just taught how much they need to alter what they have found so that they don't get found out by their cut and paste.

Bullet points

I don't think that bullet points existed until word-processing. I certainly don't remember them. Until then, if you wrote a report or an essay, you were required to compare and contrast; or, weigh the pros and cons; or, consider the implications. You had to think ideas through carefully and express them as clearly as you could. If you took a pride in it, you balanced the ideas through the prose, thesis and antithesis.

Nowadays, if someone asks you for a report, they ask for half-a-dozen bullet points, no more than a page of A4.

I can't help but think that something has been lost, in the expression but also in the understanding. 

Billy

Billy was a rabbit
Billy was a frog
Billy was a blackbird
Billy was a dog

Billy was the only slave
Of a mad magician
Who used to change his shape
To suit each new position

So Billy was a carthorse
When he pulled the plough
But when the milkman didn't come
Billy was a cow

Billy was a hairless cat
To warm his master's bed
But when the pipes were frozen
He used dragon's breath instead

Billy wasn't very bright
And didn't think it strange
That when he questioned why this was
It was called "resisting change"

Billy was the only slave
In his master's hall
But knew that he was fortunate
To have a job at all

And Billy counts his blessings
Despite the constant stress
As there are private companies
Who'd do the job for less

So Billy learns to cram himself
Into each different form
And sometimes he's an elephant
And sometimes he's a worm

Sometimes he's a crocodile
And sometimes he's an ape
Just as his master forces him
Into each different shape

And as there is no helping hand
And all the work to do
Billy isn't Billy
Billy is a zoo

So it's pretty much like working in the public sector under a conservative government

Day bag

When the children were little, Husband and I never went anywhere without the "day bag", which we kept packed with all those things - nappies, wipes, bottles, toys, more wipes - that small children need during the course of the day. As far as possible it was kept ready packed, with just a quick top-up needed each day of things which had run out or which needed to be fresh.

Son and Daughter have left home for university but the old folk still have the "day bag" for holidays and days out. What does it hold now? A rather sad collection of essentials for the not-so-young - prescription medicines, reading glasses, binoculars, spare plastic carrier bags.

Cosy

We have stayed in a good few self-catering properties in our time, both at home and abroad. Generally the standard has risen over the years - I haven't forgotten the concrete shed in Samos twenty years ago where it was only possible to move around if one of us stayed on the bed, where the bathroom backed on to the chicken-house and where the kitchen equipment amounted to one very large saucepan that would have taken a whole goat, and one very small saucepan that contained barely half a pint, and nothing in-between - and possibly the improvement is partly due to our spending a bit more on it as we got older, slightly richer and a lot more demanding.

However, the one thing that it always missing is a tea-cosy. Even in England, and even where the kitchen is full of the most specialist equipment, a plethora of pans and cupboards full of crockery, we have never found a tea-cosy to cover the teapot (which itself is always supplied as standard). Discussing this again yesterday, Husband said he had heard a radio phone-in where people didn't even know what a tea-cosy was.

I know that many people make tea in a mug. I do it myself at work. But at home we always make a pot, and often a big pot, and if we didn't use a cosy then our second cups would be tepid, never mind the third and fourth cups.

Tea-cosies used to be a staple at church fairs, bring and buy sales and all sorts of fund-raising events because they are easy to make (I prefer knitted ones with holes for handle and spout). Not so long ago, there were lots of novelty ones shaped like cats or cottages, but even these are not so easy to find nowadays.

And if tea-cosies are becoming rarer, what about their small cousins, egg-cosies? I can't remember the last time I saw an egg cosy for sale. Are they following anti-macassars and lace doilies into extinction?

(In case you are wondering, we use either a folded tea-towel draped over the pot or, as at present, Husband's woolly hat. The warmth of the pot has the added advantage of drying it off after a wet day out although it must be said that it is getting less fragrant as the week wears on).

Society? What society?

All it takes is a little bit of snow.

I quite like snow, as long as I can look at it through a window. It is when I have to walk up the street, catch the bus, stand on the platform and wait for a train, that I don't like snow so much.

And what surprises me a little more each year is how few people nowadays clear the bit of pavement in front of their houses or in front of their shops. I will excuse the elderly and the infirm of all ages. But even in households with several able-bodied adults, very few come out with a shovel or a broom and make the little effort to be community-minded.

And what enrages me is how many of those who make no effort to clear the pavement, do make a considerable effort to clear their drives, so their cars can get easily in and out. That's what matters nowadays - the car. Not the pedestrian.

So when our government invokes the Big Society, I know that there is no such thing, just the blinkered selfishness that the same government represents.