Melanie McDonagh

Tried to send a parcel lately? Or a letter? If it involves a trip to a post office, all I can say is, give it time. A fortnight ago, I was posting a book to a friend and took it to the nearest post office – the central, City of London one. It’s housed in a convenience store: handy if you want a samosa but lacking dignity, somehow. All the electronic terminals were out of action, four or five of them. The queue was patient but prohibitively long. Thinking bad thoughts about privatisation, I made my way to the post office in Kensington Church Street, which is a proper outfit; that was closed. I tried the Kensington High Street branch, but its machines were out of action too. I gave up.

After Pope Francis emerged from the Gemelli hospital in Rome last month, a reflection attributed to him a few years ago returned to circulation. It was on ‘hospital’. Some of it was the usual, about how it’s where like meets unlike (‘In intensive care you see a Jew taking care of a racist’ etc). Some seems like standard homely Francis: ‘This life will pass quickly, so do not waste it fighting with people… Do not worry too much about keeping the house spotless.’ And it ended: ‘Love more, forgive more, embrace more… And leave the rest in the hands of the Creator.’ That was the disconcerting thing about Francis. Everything eventually boiled down to the love of God. It’s why even sound criticism of him somehow misses the mark.

As timing goes, a pope simply can’t do better than to die just after Easter Sunday. The moral of the thing hardly needs saying. Francis died in Christ and will share His Resurrection. In fact, that’s exactly what several bishops have been observing today. But Francis also had his Good Friday. He was desperately ill in the Gemelli hospital in February, being very close to death in particular on 28 February. But he pulled through with all the drugs and therapies possible, and went triumphantly on. For that’s what he did. That popemobile trip round St Peter’s Square yesterday, the meeting with J.D.

How do you breach an abortion buffer zone protection order? Why, by being within 150 metres of any part of a building where abortions are carried out. You’re not allowed to cause harassment, alarm or distress to anyone going to them, nor obstruct them from the site. Neither are you allowed to ‘influence’ anyone having or providing an abortion. And there’s the thing.

One way or another in life, we end up making choices, even if we think we’re choosing not to choose. The choice not to marry, to live with someone instead, is one example. Passing on the public commitment and going for sex plus domesticity is a choice, one in which, I imagine, the absence of commitment is part of the appeal. You don’t fancy the for-better-or-worse stuff, the Waterford glass wedding presents, the joint pension provision? Well, that’s just dandy, but complaining that you don’t have the perks of matrimony when your open-ended arrangement breaks up does seem to be trying to have it both ways. And having it both ways is precisely what the government seems to want to encourage.  It’s launching a consultation on giving greater rights to cohabitees.

‘Are you Ramadan-ready?’ That was the poster in Sainsbury’s advertising its delicious range of fast-breaking foods (rice was one). And the striking thing about it was… the ‘you’. That ‘you’ means the normal customer, the default Sainsbury’s shopper. Same with the email I got from the swanky Belgravia hair salon I used to visit: Here, we understand that Ramadan is a time of reflection, renewal and spiritual focus – and we also know how important it is to take a moment for yourself amid the busy days of fasting and prayer. That’s why we are delighted to announce that our salon will be open late during Ramadan, offering evening appointments so you can indulge in a little luxurious self-care after Iftar [the fast-breaking meal after sundown].

The Pope's autobiography is out and it's still not entirely clear why. Carlo Musso, the 'co-author' of Hope: The Autobiography, says that it was originally intended to be published after his death, but on account of 'the new Jubilee of Hope' (the Jubilee Year), and the 'circumstances of this moment' (i.e. him not dying), it's been brought forward. Truth to tell it reads a bit scrappily, more like a series of interviews, with occasional errors – the Arian heresy, for instance, is not the 'Aryan' heresy, presumably a Hitlerian thing. The book is up to date, taking on board his encounter with clerical sex abuse survivors in Belgium last year (he doesn't mention his brutal going-over by his horrible Belgian hosts) and his meeting a few months ago with transexuals.

Another Christmas, another BBC adaptation of a Julia Donaldson story. This time it's an animated version of Tiddler, the story of a little fish who is always late for school and who makes up tall stories to explain why. The tall stories get around the ocean and when Tiddler gets caught by a fishing boat and tossed back in the sea, he is able to find his way home to Miss Skate and her lesson by following his own stories. Aww. As the CBeebies storyteller observed, 'What make us powerful is not how big we are but by what's inside.' A perfect parable for our day then.

Well, the pro-choicers have got their way. In two years’ time, if Kim Leadbeater’s reassurances hold good, we’ll have the option, if we tick the boxes, of ending our lives with a handful of ground-up barbiturates or some other undisclosed cocktail of painkillers at the expense of the NHS. We now know what is the guiding principle that animates the MPs that voted this through. It’s not solidarity; it’s not the principle that Danny Kruger articulated, that ‘no man is an island’ and what affects one affects us all. No. Austin Mitchell put it concisely: ‘this is about choice’. Or as Kim Leadbeater said obligingly, if we have the choice to die we have the choice not to die; there is no compulsion. Very obliging, I’m sure.