Care

The carer on my mother’s doorstep took one look at me and addressed me in a slow, patronising bellow. ‘Hello Mrs Kite!’ she yelled, as I answered the door. ‘And how are you feeling today?’ I informed this uniquely annoying woman – for all carers are annoying in their own distinct ways – that I was, in fact, the patient’s daughter. She apologised but the universe had made its point. My hair was standing on end, I was still in my pyjamas at 9.30 a.m., I had chest pains. In the dead of night, I had been woken by my mother standing over me with a pair of kitchen scissors. In the dead of night, I had been woken by my mother standing over me with a pair of kitchen scissors A few days earlier, she had fallen in her living room and broken her wrist.

It is repeatedly pointed out – I have probably written it myself – that the triple lock on the state pension is ruinous. There is a genuine difficulty, though, political and moral, about getting rid of it. No one likes to lose a benefit they already possess. The abolition will annoy 99 percent of its recipients, of whom there are 13.2 million. Besides, we pensioners have retained a traditional skill almost entirely lost to younger generations, called voting. We know how to go to a polling station and put a cross on a ballot paper. We therefore have the power to slay any party we think is making us poorer. The Tories invented the triple lock.

Marrying in office It was announced Boris Johnson will marry his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, next year. This will be only the fourth time a serving prime minister has married while in office. — Robert Walpole married Maria Skerrett, daughter of a wealthy merchant, on 3 March 1738, following the death of his first wife. Sadly, Maria died in childbirth a year later. — In the 15 months the Duke of Grafton was prime minister he found time to divorce his first wife and marry his second, Elizabeth Wrottlesley, on 24 June 1769. — Lord Liverpool married Mary Chester, a friend of his deceased first wife, at Hampton Court on 24 September 1822. Cancer detection How has cancer treatment been affected by the pandemic?