Laurie Graham

There’s often a traffic jam in front of the Battle of Britain window in Westminster Abbey and I recently found myself jockeying for position with a man wearing a baseball cap. A hat, in church! I thought I ought to say something, but as I was with an official guide, I decided it perhaps wasn’t my place. A very English cop-out, I confess. Then I saw a second man in a cap and, hat-radar activated, I started counting. And stopped at seven. Clearly, it was impossible that seven male hat wearers had all slipped unnoticed past the Abbey’s considerable security and, equally clearly, there must be a new attitude to hats in church and I hadn’t received the memo. I thought I’d check with the Very Reverend Dean.

Nye Bevan did not make old bones, and perhaps that’s just as well. According to a recent British Social Attitudes survey, 52 per cent of those polled are dissatisfied with the NHS, in particular with the difficulties in getting a GP appointment, with long A&E trolley waits and with huge delays for hospital appointments. All this, in spite of ever more money being chucked into its maw. If invited, I could immediately save the NHS a packet by dialling down the thermostat that has turned hospitals into Hotel Tropicana for bacteria, and by asking, wherever possible, patients’ relatives to provide food, thereby reducing the amount of unappetising slop that goes straight from plate to bin while the sick go hungry. But that is not my theme today.

It’s been brought to my attention that it is no longer done to describe a person as fat. Better, apparently, to say that they are ‘living with obesity’. This weasel construction makes obesity sound like a malevolent squatter who refuses to be evicted. Or like a bit of genetic bad luck, such as ‘living with ginger eyelashes’. It’s someone else’s fault. The western world has undoubtedly lost the plot with regard to diet, but before I say more, full disclosure: I am, according to the flawed metrics of BMI, obese. I reject the label, not because I’m in denial but because an index that ignores age, sex and muscle and bone mass isn’t really worth a light. I’ll stick with the Tightening Waistband Indicator.

Two years ago, without being ennobled in any Honours list or recourse to surgery, I gained a new title. To the list of Mrs Graham, Mum and Nonna, I added Brother. It signified that I had become a resident of the Charterhouse almshouse.  The title is, if nothing else, a conversation piece. If I’m required to attend a party where I’m unlikely to know any of the other guests, I now wear my Charterhouse badge. It catches the eye and, at the age of 75, having my right breast scrutinised is no longer open to misinterpretation. ‘Brother Laurie?’ they say. ‘How intriguing. Do tell.’ Comrade? Too Leninist. Citizen? I hear the creak of tumbril wheels. Messer? Too military. Friend?

Santa Claus is coming to town. I know this because I recently spent an evening gift-wrapping empty boxes to decorate his grotto at an upcoming Christmas fair. With most of my grandchildren now in their teens, it’s been a while since I endured the grotto experience and I was interested to know how such a thing is managed in 2022. How does one navigate between overbearing safeguarding guidelines and the jaded palate of today’s pre-school sophisticate? Is it even worth the bother? Father Christmas must nowbe accompanied at all times byone or more vigilant adults  Like anyone who volunteers for a role that will place them in the company of children, our Santa will undoubtedly have been subjected to a Disclosure and Barring Service background check.

A year ago, I moved into what I hope will be my home for the rest of my life. I became an almshouse resident. The announcement of my implied reduced circumstances provoked some interesting responses: from family, joy that my recent hard times were over; from acquaintances, a range of reactions: embarrassment, shocked disbelief, scepticism. Even some thinly veiled envy. Who’d have thought? What kind of person ends their days in an almshouse? The key word is need. It might be financial, it might be social, perhaps both. Some people are quite alone in the world. Some reach old age with a negligible pension, or no roof over their head.

Waiting at a coach station recently, in the space of seven minutes I was cautioned three times by the disembodied voice of Big Nanny. No smoking or vaping was allowed. Cycling was prohibited. Pedestrians were directed to use only the designated crossings. I almost wished I’d opted to travel by rail, but then I remembered that Big Nanny rides on trains too. In a quieter era of rail travel the only announcements, apart from service cancellations, used to be the one about refraining from urination when the train was in the station, and advice not to poke your head out of the window of a moving carriage. Which some dimwits nevertheless did with tragic consequences and so removed themselves from the gene pool. Now, though, Train Nanny never shuts up.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I know who still have a landline telephone, and I am not among them. Getting one installed in my new home is feasible but why, my children ask, would I bother? I have a mobile phone, albeit a very basic one, and what more can a person need? To anyone under the age of 50, retaining a landline seems like a fogey-ish affectation. Indeed, one of my daughters has a rotary-dial handset, not as a back-up phone but as an ironic décor item. Because if you’re wearing a belt, why have braces? For mobile users there’s the back-up possibility of something called a cloud. Otherwise, nothing. You entrust your appointment diary, address book and photo collection to one device: your mobile phone.

I’m perched on the bed reading an old Mothering Sunday card. It’s just one item in a box of miscellanea that I must sort and prune and I really can’t afford the time to linger. That box contains a fraction of what I have to deal with before I move house and I need to crack on. But I am sweating the small stuff. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. One of the legacies of lockdown has been a longing for more space. Across the UK, families with children are falling over themselves to find bigger places. It’s a downsizers’ market right now for those of us who feel ready to let go and to set about the sorting and binning of things. It’s good for us, they say. It’s liberating, they say. My home-moving history is not an unusual one.

The ladies of my church knitting circle (note, we are open to those who identify ‘-otherly’, and to practitioners of diverse crafts) are an enterprising bunch, and no techno slouches either. Unbowed by Covid, we have continued to meet via Zoom, bringing along our own tea, cake and creative endeavours. We love a project, and we now have one: a time capsule of the plague year. This idea is so far proving to be more a feasibility study than a done deal. There are so many decisions to make. What size should the capsule be? Where will it be stored? When will it be reopened, and by whom? And what will they find when they do?