Mindless violence

I went on the demonstration yesterday - with a quarter of a million other people. There were five of us together, and none of us had ever done such a thing before. It won't make any difference - already the press and politicians (can you spot the difference?) are saying that it can be ignored, because it was just public sector workers trying to save their own skins. But you see, that's the way the private sector thinks - the private sector thinks, it's all about me. In the public sector, we think about other people, we help other people. We believe in communities, we believe in society. The government believes in shareholders, in how much money they can make from other people (or "suckers", as they think of us).

It was a peaceful, friendly, tolerant, cheerful march which brought together all sorts of people. We ended up marching behind the RMT and their brass band. There were lots of bands (it is the first time I have ever heard a pipe band playing the Internationale), lots of inventive placards, it was fun.

Long after most of us had left, there was an outbreak of more direct action along Oxford Street. This is beng described by everyone this morning as, "Mindless violence". It's an easy phrase, trite and dismissive. But it wasn't mindless - it was carefully targetted, it was planned, it was managed. I don't condone it, but I'm not going to dismiss it either. If the peaceful protests are ignored, what's the alternative?

Or are we all happy to agree that as long as you've got the money, you can buy a health service, education, a nice house in a safe area, and if you haven't got the money, well, that's your problem, isn't it?

Friday night in Morrisons

I hadn't realised how many people there were who had never managed a supermarket trolley before, but of course there's a first time for all of us.

But isn't it thoughtful of Morrisons to designate Friday night as an opportunity for novices to turn up and try the trolleys out for the first time, and feel free to experiment with emergency stops, blind reversing and all the other manouevres that they are uncertain about.

After all, it isn't as if the rest of us might be trying to grab our supper and get home as quickly as possible.

Achingly hip

When a woman of my years uses "aching" and "hip" in the same sense, it is usually to describe physical discomfort. But today we went to the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the experience was unsettling. I have never seen so many achingly hip people under one roof.

Where do they get their haircuts?

Where do they get their clothes from (not from M&S and John Lewis, that's for sure)?

How did they get to Whitechapel (there was noone like them in the streets outside)?

For a start, there was almost noone under 30 - the few older people were unusual (and in that I include the elderly bald geezer in shorts - yes, shorts - and baseball boots with a copy of Fighting fit under his arm).

We saw an exhibit that consisted of balls of string.

And another that was a raised section of the gallery floor. That's all, just a raised section of floor. We spent a while admiring the stark but witty message about our perceptions of space.

In the next room was a metal staircase and we admired its simple elegance too - until the attendant told us that it was the fire escape.

"There's nothing wrong with the one we've got"

I am not an extravagant woman - no, really, I'm not. I was brought up in a household whose habits had been shaped by rationing and hard times and I simply wouldn't understand a way of life that didn't involve saving bits of string or picking up the postman's red rubber bands from the pavement (we have a drawer full of them. They'll come in handy one day). For goodness' sake, even my best new raincoat was got from the charity shop. Glorious though it is, I wouldn't have paid for it new.

But even I want new things sometimes. Take our fridge (I wish you would take our fridge). I hate it with a passion that is entirely disporportionate. We've had it for twenty years, and on the day it was delivered - when it finally was delivered, late at night, after many many phonecalls and a huge amount of vituperation, Husband asked me as they were lugging it up the drive if I was fed up enough that I wanted to tell them to take it away again, we didn't want it any more. I said no, now it was finally here we'd stick with it - and I've regretted that decision ever since. (Mind you, I've never been back into the shop that sold it to us and I never will).

It is half fridge and half freezer, neither half being very large. It was the first freezer we ever had, and as we outgrew it, we bought another freezer in addition and it works very well, having the little one in the kitchen and the big one in the shed. But we are still stuck with the little fridge. There were only two of us when we bought it - now there are four and I can't fit into it the things that need to go in. I want a new one and a bigger one.

After twenty years of hard knocks, it isn't in the best shape - bits of trim are missing, one of the salad drawers is broken, and the handle regularly falls off, plus if you push the butter to the back it freezes solid to the back wall. But it does still work. So what does Husband say when I make the case for a new fridge? "There's nothing wrong with the one we've got."

Sages and poets say that the saddest phrase in the language is, "If only". Sages and poets don't have Husbands and knackered (but alas still functioning) fridges.

Going home

There is something about going to Tunbridge Wells that always feels like going home. Come out of the station and there it all is, in the same place it always was, Mount Pleasant and the High Street and Grove Road and - OK, it's another store now where it used to be Weekes, and there's a pizza place where the Cadena should be - but it is still home. I haven't lived there for forty years, not full time - there were a lot of years when I went home to visit or stay with parents, but even that is long ago now and I've lived in my present house longer than ever I lived in Tunbridge Wells. But it is still familiar, I know what people are going to say (and what they mean when they do, which isn't always the same thing, especially in Tunbridge Wells) and there is a great sense of relief and relaxation in being back.

Lots of people feel like that about the towns where they were born, it isn't unusual.

But what I am starting to feel is beginning to worry me, because it isn't just the place I was brought up that feels familiar, but the time. I am starting to look at bits of old film, old newsreels, archive film in documentaries on the television, and I am thinking, yes, that looks like where I'd feel comfortable. Men in hats, and those long raincoats with belts (long before trench coats), and women with wide skirts and duster coats. That looks like where I would feel comfortable and at home.

Now, I hated Tunbridge Wells when I was growing up there, it was dull and boring and suburban and bourgeois and I couldn't wait to get away to that other place somewhere else where all the clever and funny people were. Not only do I want to go back to that place again now, but to the time that it was when I lived there. I don't want to be the person I was then, I don't want to be seventeen again, but oh, wouldn't it be nice just to go home, really home, to home like it used to be?

Now, that was embarrassing

A few weeks ago, walking home from work in the dark, a hunched teenage figure came up the road towards me, hoodie up, and made no attempt to avoid me, coming straight for me - and I thought, ho hum, I'm going to be challenged, or maybe even mugged... Turned out it was Son. Well, they all look the same at that age, don't they?

Needless to say, he thought this hugely funny.

One night last week, the same thing happened. Same teenage figure, same hoodie, same dark road. I wasn't going to be fooled a second time, so I went right up to him and glared at him.

Only it wasn't Son. Just some frightened kid who thought he was about to be mugged by a mad granny.

Frustration

Why does the washing machine always hit its spin cycle at 10 past 11 on a Sunday morning, so I miss the climax of The Archers?