Looking for foxes

I watch people on the train - I watch people on the train a lot. Almost everyone is absorbed in something, a book, a newspaper or, more and more often, an electronic gadget. These are getting smaller all the time, but offering more and more to look at, and sometime soon I expect we'll reach the point where we can "see a world in a grain of sand". But it takes a lot of concentration and while people are staring at their tiny screens they are completely unaware of the real world passing by outside the train windows.

I read on the train sometimes - quite often, in fact - and of course I watch the people, but I also look out of the windows. I know where the rabbits are, and the pond where the heron used to stand, and when I'm on a slow train I look to see if I can see the family of foxes. They are usually there on sunny mornings. The cubs are quite big now.

I think people would enjoy their journeys much more if sometimes they looked up and out of the windows.

Long legs

It must be awful to have long legs, and especially on trains, where there is nowhere to put them and nothing you can do but spread those legs to their fullest extent and ram them into the person sitting next to you. It must be so uncomfortable to have your hot sweaty thighs pressed against someone else.

It's the sort of thing that would make you embarrassed so that you open up your big broadsheet newspaper and try to cover up your legs, even if that does mean intruding right over your neighbour's lap and jabbing them in the ribs with your elbows every time you turn a page.

And imagine how awkward it is when someone insists on trying to get off the train and wants you to move your legs out of their way.

I'm so glad that I don't have long legs.

I wish I didn't have to sit next to people who do.

Old ladies' feet

That's what I've got now - old ladies' feet.

I noticed it when I put my sandalled feet up on the coffee table. They're knobbly. It isn't just rough skin that could be rubbed and moisturised away. My feet actually look like a collection of odd bones stuffed into a skin bag. They stick out in odd places and at odd angles. And the toenails are going thick and scaly.

It's been difficult buying sandals for a while, having to be careful that the most sticky-out bones are hidden and not protruding through between the straps. Does this mean that I have to start buying old ladies' sandals - cream and solid with lacing up the front? And thick nearly-flesh-coloured tights?

Or would some of those lovely gladiator or wrapped sandals (there's a lovely pair in Clarks) do the trick?

Invisible me

I have got used to those people standing on the street handing out fliers for clubs and bars not trying to hand one to me. I know that their target audience is the young and wild, those who go out at night rather than slumping on the sofa in front of mindless cookery/gardening/wildlife television programmes.

I have almost got used to those people handing out fliers for gym membership not trying to hand one to me. They want the young, too, or at least the middle-aged, not the tubby old bag hobbling along out of breath and wheezing.

But I was a bit put out when the young girls handing out make-up samples at the station looked at me and didn't try to hand me one. I didn't think I looked that rough.

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.