Laurie Graham

Last week, on a Swedish train somewhere between Linkoping and Mjolby, as I struggled to open a bag of cheesy doofers that was to serve as my lunch, my travel companions began unwrapping their own picnics. Some, like me, had made hasty and unappetising purchases at the station. Others had carefully curated lunches, assembled earlier

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

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

In July, when I was asked to confect ‘another Christmas entertainment’ for my community, I viewed such a distant elephant with equanimity. Like memories of the pain of childbirth, the nightmares of amateur dramatics soon fade. Besides, I’d done this many times and survived to tell the tale. All I needed was to reassemble last

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Hippocrates prescribed it to allay lassitude, James Bond favoured it as a token of his manliness, and in less indulgent times Gordonstoun school insisted on it: the cold shower. And now it’s having a moment with the wellness brigade. (The very word ‘wellness’ used to send me screaming from the room: a Californian import, I

Long ago and far away, small children used to arm-wrestle their siblings for the privilege of opening a door in a cardboard Advent calendar. It was reward enough to find a picture of an angel or an awestruck donkey. How quaint that now seems. Because then Cadbury saw an opportunity and launched an alternative calendar,

I have given up handbags. Men may think this a trifling thing. Women will understand it was not a painless decision. In my adult life I had rarely left home without a bag. Sometimes just a small clutch bag, but more likely a bucket bag which hung, with the weight of a Yorkshire terrier, from

When my husband died last month, I was as prepared as a person can be. Howard had been afflicted for many years by early-onset dementia and that, as we all know, is a one-way street. What I was totally unprepared for was the lockdown factor. Could we even have a funeral? Yes, we could, as

Here’s a cheerful thought: we are all going to die. Some of my friends are under 70 but most, now I come to count them, are not. We have had our Biblical allocation of three score years and ten and then some. So imagine my surprise to discover how unprepared many of my senior crowd

Our grandchildren are penniless. They have pretty much everything their hearts desire and they have parents with wallets full of plastic, but they lack the satisfying chink of coins in a jam jar. I was alerted to this state of affairs when one of our tribe turned nine and I asked his mother how much