Eurostar chic

I travel on the Eurostar every six weeks or so. I usually go overnight at most, sometimes there and back in a day. This presents a huge dilemma because I grew up in the generation of package holidays, when our parents, themselves children in the war, with privations they vowed they would do everything to ensure their children would not ever have to experience, found its articulation in The Summer Holiday, which had to involve planes, or at least very long train rides, and beaches, so you could get a mahogany tan to show off at school in the Autumn term. Travelling for holidays is really easy. You throw on something comfortable which will also hide the peanut butter stain you will invariably get on it when some kid throws a sandwich at you in the aisles. Trust me. This happens frequently. When you travel business, you have to combine comfort with smart, confident workwear that will not crumple, looks feminine, will not suck in your stomach so much that you bloat at 30000 feet, and will retain its professionalism at the end of the day as well as at the beginning. Peanut butter sandwich experiences? Not even a starter. And if you travel on the Eurostar there is the added dilemma, if there weren't enough pressure already, to dress in French chic. How do Francophone women DO this? The night before a Eurostar trip I tip all my clothes on to my bed and search frantically for the perfect Parisian chic combo, which of course I don't own. What I want is a strippy strappy dress that comes in around an inch or two above the knee, that I can throw an insouciantly smart jacket over, and team nonchalantly with flats or sandals and still look like I work for a posh design company. I don't, I work for the government, but I have been in denial about the classic civil servant attire from day one. Visiting my department? I'll be the belisha beacon in hot pink seated by the window. But I don't have any strippy strappy dresses and my jackets are not insouciant, they are stiff, structured and undeniably British. I look for navy blue trousers, a dark blue jacket, and a red t shirt. Yup that hits the comfort button, but it also looks one step removed from a French flag - red lippy and I'm going to look like a Parisian cheerleader. Finally I settle for black trousers, white jersey tuxedo jacket with black lined lapels, and a red t shirt. Striking, comfortable, wrinkle proof, I just have to ensure I put the white jacket in the overhead shelf, far from peanut butter sandwich throwing kids. But at St Pancras I can't quite stop myself from riffling wistfully through the racks of Eurotrash dresses on sale in the various boutiques. One day, I promise myself. One day, I will alight from the Eurostar at Brussels Gare du Midi, looking like Keira Knightley on a Chanel no 5 shoot. One day.

Missing someone

I made a lemon polenta cake. I've blogged about this cake before - it's a Nigella Lawson recipe I found on a website looking for lemon cake recipes. It looks beautiful and yellow but it only really comes to life when you maks the syrup with squeezed lemon juice and sugar and pour it over the cake while it's still hot. Then it sings. It is a huge hit with vanilla ice cream or since you make it with a scarey amoutn of butter, just scoffed straight down on its own, with a very large mug of milky tea.  Usually I am first in line for a slice - this is one of my own personal favourites - but this week I have been visited by a lot of people who have taken it upon themselves to bring cake, biscuits and chocolate, for no very obvious reason, and therefore I am spoilt for choice. Why this sudden rash of visitors? Really, no reason on their parts. On mine, though, I have been craving company. This week, nothing at all has triggered a feeling of intense loneliness, that has its roots in the fact that I really, really miss my elder sister. For many years I would talk to her almost every day, usually at around 7pm - we would both have got in for work, changed, and have just begun preparing dinner for our respective families. What are you making, she would ask, and I would tell her, and she would advise me on her take on the menu, and then the roles would reverse and I would run a commentary on hers. Invariably we would go from there to discussions about the best cakes we had ever made, a conversation that would go on for years. Only then would we get on to talk about the family, how this one and that were doing. When you talk to someone nearly every day for years, when that stops, the part of you that looked forward to that conversation, and enjoyed it so much when it was going on, and would relive bits of it afterwards, feels abandoned, bereft, lost. Nobody can fill that gap. I talk more often to my younger sister, but we are all different characters, we played different roles, and my elder sister, as the eldest, was the Carer. You had a problem? You talked to her. You wanted to share a joke? You talked to me. etc. Problems don't stop when you suffer an enormous bereavement. It's not like Fate decides you've had your share and it's time to move on. So with no elder sister there to advise, and nobody who could fill that unique space of making the time for you without thought, offering you deeply partisan support, and warm words, whether you acted on them or not - well, every time I have an issue I would love to run by her - or actually just a great cake recipe, or a dinner dilemma - it is like ripping off the Elastoplast and digging around in the wound. There has been quite a lot of that this week and my dearest friends appear to have sensed this and acted on it, as much as anyone can help with the utter despair of being forced to confront the reality, over and over and over again, that something has happened that you cannot change, influence or reverse. My sister is gone. I don't want for shoulders to cry on, thankfully. But the unique place she held in my life, well that has been slow to close itself up since I lost her, a bit like your stomach taking a while to register that it is full, while you are still stuffing yourself.  All this cake looks really lovely. I just really, really miss her.

Singing

I sing all the time. It drives the people I live with totally nuts sometimes. Mostly I will break randomly into song - some tune that has been on my mind, or that I just heard on the radio on the way home, or that my community was singing last Friday night. My son had a huge party last weekend and the last track danced at the party won't leave my head no matter how much I want it to, and as it happens I don't want it to as the party was the culmination of one of the happiest weekends we have spent as a family for quite a long time. And that last track, a beautiful, uplifting, upbeat melody, epitomised it. Music touches a part of my insides that nothing else can, and it has always been that way for me. Whenever I bake, I listen to music. Usually the cringiest kind of dance music, or sometimes I will have a culture buff moment and stick Radio 6 on or listen to some of my husband's more obscure but achingly cool Bloke Music. One of the main reasons why I don't cycle more often than I do is because it's too dangerous to wear headphones. My idea of nirvana would be to swim laps in a pool with underwater speakers. Piped music in hotel bathrooms is offputting to loads of people but I absolutely love it. I hum on my way to the station, sometimes actually sing out loud during my walks, to the consternation of random strangers on the path. I work out to high octane music and iron to classical music, paint my toenails to the beat and wash up to the latest in rock. My taste is not that discriminating. It just has to move me. I find those movies that end with someone singing, tears rolling down their cheeks, burningly cringy but that doesn't mean I don't believe it can happen. It is rare for a song to reduce me to tears. I mean, really rare. But last October my sister died, and her death prompted only the second period of my life when I was totally unable to sing. The first time, was just after I had my thyroids removed. I had to have them out because there was a malignant tumour on one of them. They took one out, tested it, it was confirmed malignant, so the other thyroid came out too. I spent time confined to bed with a tube coming out of my throat, and when I came home I rasped my words out for 2 weeks before my voice box began to recover from the trauma. Very quickly after that it returned to normal. Until one Friday night, when I opened my mouth to sing, as I do every Friday night (used to be a family sing song till my kids became old enough to exercise their right to bow out, which was about as soon as they decided we looked like the Family Von Trapp) - I opened my mouth to sing, and nothing came out. There was no singing voice at all. I was profoundly grief stricken for the first time in my whole cancer treatment. I had been entirely pragmatic about the removal of my thyroids, the necessity of radiotherapy, the compulsory thyroxine I would have to take every day for the rest of my life, the hundreds of scans to determine whether I had tumours anywhere else in my body (I didn't). But when I couldn't sing, I fell apart. It was a profound part of me, my ability to sing. I sing well - I have been in choirs, and sung solo on a stage, and played guitar around campfires, and induced an appreciation of music in my kids who both play instruments and sing beautifully when threatened - so it was a horrible loss of itself, but of course since singing has always been an expression of my emotions, not being able to sing, meant that outlet had been stoppered up. I wasn't having any of it of course. I found online exercises for the voice box, worked at them for a year, and got my voice back again. That is a a very short way of describing an arduous vocal physiotherapy process, but whatever, it had to be done, and when I was out the other side with my voice back, it wasn't as strong and it didn't have quite the range it used to, but it was still my voice. I had lost my confidence to perform too but that didn't matter. I put it to excellent use in the kitchen, the garden, the street, the gym - it felt like a triumphant end to my illness to be able to sing out. When my sister died, I was shellshocked while in mourning, and when mourning was over and I returned to my normal life, I couldn't just not sing, I couldn't listen to any music at all. Grief takes people in different ways and for me music tapped the core of my emotions in a way I simply could not manage. So I stopped singing. I used to attend a fantastic small singing group on Saturday mornings, but I stopped going. I would last about five minutes with my community - the minute they launched into the first chord of the first song I would be up with my bag and out the door reaching for tissues. It was unbearable. Then my son had his coming of age weekend, and the great joy I experienced for him and his achievements, transcended my grief. It was the first time since my sister's death that anything had done that. And I began to sing, just a bit. A few lines here. A verse there. I put my headphones back on. I switched on the radio. The house lost its silence, bit by bit (one of my kids plays the drums so it was never actually silent, but, you know.) I started visiting my piano. I still haven't actually sat at it to play anything, but I have sat at it, and looked at the keys. Which is something. Next month I plan to go back to the small singing group I was part of. It is as if the great time of joy we have just experienced has helped to rebalance, just a bit, the part of me that was knocked sideways by the loss of my sister.  Singing as healing. It's like the end of one of those movies.

I don't wear Pink

About 5 or 6 years ago, I was bought a makeover for a birthday present. It was one of those ones where a woman brings several cheap Chinese pashminas to your house, each one a different shade, and holds them to your face, to determine whether you are a Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. To say I was dubious about the process would be putting it mildly. But it was a transformation. She stuck a pure white scarf under my throat and I was illuminated, with a complexion as gleaming as a high energy light bulb. Then she replaced it with a cream scarf and I instantly aged ten years. Amazing. Well, it turned out that I was a Winter. I put together all my non-Winter colour clothes, which was everything except a skirt and one sweater, into several bin liners and gave them away. Then of course had to go shopping, which was the fun bit. She went a few days before me to scope out the clothes, then on the big day we hit Kingston, I headed for the changing rooms and she brought it all to me. And I bought the lot. A whole new wardrobe.And I've never looked back. Have you any idea at all how liberating it is to walk into a shop and pass racks and racks of garish orange or khaki clothes thinking, nope. Not my colour??? The time it saves! And the money! And the queuing in the customer services department!! Brilliant. So the Winter palette includes fabulous rich jewel colours of red, purple, turquoise, blue, bottle green, and I indulge all of them. Except one. And that's pink. The Winter pink is the in your face bright hot colour. I ought to love it. But I don't. Because apart from the fact that I was born into this life as a tomboy, and spent the first 15 years of it climbing trees in fabulously seventies flared checked trousers, my corporate introduction into the world of work included a gender ban on pink. Wearing pink was like pulling photos of your kids out at meetings. It defined you as frippery and superficial, someone who wore frosted nail varnish and drank Baileys-based cocktails. It's a great shame for pink that this should be the case, but despite fashion's best efforts to give it an edge, it remains unapologetically girly. And I am unapologetically clunky. I turn my clunkiness to an advantage by pairing elegantly turned bovver shoes with my wide cut work trousers and an edgy jacket. But try matching it with a pink shirt and the whole thing shrieks Beauty School Dropout. Occasionally I try something pink on in shops, look at it wistfully, then the scales drop from my eyes and the item goes straight back on the rails. Pink swimsuits? For girls who dip their toes into the pool while sipping lemonade. Pink towels? For girls who don't get wet. Pink nail polish? Katie Price. Pink dresses? Ballet class. There is no other colour so uncompromisingly one dimensional. I won't even use pink cupcake cases because of the way they marginalise their contents. A good friend of mine has an all pink kitchen. I get that she's a fan of the colour but if I sit for too long in it, it begins to make me feel slightly nauseous, as if I've OD'd on candy floss. I kind of admire the commitment to girliness, but I can't jump into it. Fire Engine Red. That's what a Gal needs to get ahead. Thank goodness it's in my Winter palette.

The Humble Cupcake

This is essentially a blog about baking as a reflection of life, and I have talked about some pretty damn fine cakes and puddings in the process. My sister's famous Crunchie Bar pudding. The Hairy Bikers chocolate truffle cheesecake. Nigella's chocolate Malteser cake. Actually I don't think I have talked about that one, but it can be summed up like this: nostalgic? Craving an overdose of butter? This is the Cake For You. But the cake I have made more of than any other, is the cupcake. It is the obvious one for kids' parties, work dos, charity fetes etc etc...it's the first thing most kids learn to bake, they are the culinary equivalent of crayon drawing. Your cupcake is the blank sheet of paper, your decorating materials are your paints and pencils, and off you go. Unleash your inner Van Gogh. Cupcakes are even platforms for political discourse. If only David Cameron had painted his manifesto on cupcakes with edible paint he might not be governing in a coalition right now. Cupcakes can be beautiful piled high with swirly white icing, shimmery glitter and an edible rose, stacked tastefully on a cake stand, or they can look gothic and ominous, made with the darkest chocolate for a black bottom base and then swirled with orange icing and painted with skulls, for Halloween, or if you have a natural Dark Side, for any time of the year. My favourite scene in the movie Bridesmaids is the one where Annie, who used to own a cake business which went bust in the recession, takes out all the ingredients for cupcakes, and makes just one. When it cools, she whips up a beautiful, creamy topping and pipes it on to her cake. She frosts it with a covering shimmer, decorates it with handmade flowers, sets it on the work surface and contemplates it. It is a thing of great skill, and fragile beauty. Then she picks it up, and sinks her teeth into it. Icing on her nose, green leaf colouring round her mouth. Brilliant. This after all is exactly what cupcakes are for in the end. This week I am making 70 of the blighters for an enormous family occasion. In among all the other things I need to do for this occasion, of which I am Sole  and Principal Organiser, therefore also No 1 Control Freak, mulling over how I will top my cupcakes, is of all tasks the most pleasurable. What mood to project with my cupcake topping? It needs to be exuberant but not girly. It needs to show skill but able to be repeated with tolerable similarity 70 times over, in a fairly limited space of time. I want people to reach for them in preference to shop bought equivalents, which they will not do if these cakes look like the first attempt of a 4 year old on their second day in Reception class. They need to be of manageable height - Annie may have afforded to get icing on her nose but I really don't want to humiliate my family and friends in quite the same way. I think about it while drinking my tea and contemplating my rampaging sweet peas (see previous post for details). I think about it on the bus and while on the treadmill at the gym, I think about it while buying bagels and getting the papers in. And finally I settle on, white chocolate icing. White chocolate screams, party. Dark and milk chocolate have been co-opted by the afficionados and feel too hardcore. White chocolate reaches out to anyone with a young heart. Plus, anything you top with them is much more visible on a creamy coloured background. I am going to top them variously with, red glitter (See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen, oooooh....), purple crystal shards, popping candy mini mountains, pastel coloured chocolate drops, and my son's name. Or just his initial if I find his name is too long to fit on the cake. Etched on in bright green or bright yellow edible colour.  It's Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat, splatted across 70 cupcakes.  How did I land on these toppings finally? Days and days of thought, followed by Oh Soddit. How often do you get the chance to celebrate exuberance. How often do you feel exuberant enough to want to exhibit it? I'm going for it. Just means I may need to hand sunglasses out to celebrants before they reach the table.

Grow your own...if you dare

I have been growing my own vegetables for a few years now. First in the wake of the BSE disaster, when we all decided as a family to eat less meat, somewhat redundant a decision since we only actually ate chicken on a regular basis; then in the wake of rising food prices and climate change. I decided it was time to do my bit. So I bought some runner bean and green bean seeds, popped them into propagators with some compost, watered religiously, and hey presto. Shoots appeared. They grew and grew and I transplanted them into individual pots, except that there were scores of them, and half way through pot transplanting I got, well, just a bit bored and decided to put three in each pot instead of one so they wouldn't feel lonely and I could get on with my next chore. And that was good for a few weeks and then they grew like Jack's Giant Beanstalk, and out of the pots they came, except for the ones I had planted in threesomes - those I had to spend tiresome hours untangling before planting them in the ground. Why don't you just chuck those ones out, said a visiting friend of mine - one of those friends whose executive refridgerators contains only a flat half drunk bottle of prosecco and a mouldy orange. I am strongly tempted to take her advice, but unfortunately Mummy hormones have set in, and it feels to me as if chucking them away would be tantamount to murder. I explain this to my incredulous friend, who calls on me to consider whether eating their fruit would not therefore constitute cannibalism. I ignore her, separate my conjoined shoots, and plant them out. A few weeks later I look out on a tangled tropical jungle. I run out for bamboo canes and prop my runner bean plants against them. They outgrow them in two weeks. I run out again for extra large bamboo canes. These just about hold the show together. A few weeks later, beans start to grow. About five of them. I display them with great pride. I steam them and present them at the dinner table. The kids refuse to eat them so my husband and I tuck in, taking care not to rush each bite since the portion is quite a small one. A few days later I harvest two or three more. A month later I dig up the lot and chuck it into the compost bin. So much for year one. But, the Winter serves to dull the memory of all the hard work and the next year I am back, this time with carrots, potatoes, cauliflour, beetroot and squash. Once again I have propagators all over the kitchen floor. One of my kids steps into one by mistake. RIP squash. The rest I plant out as shoots begin to show, except for the beetroot, which totally fail to show. I have absolutely no idea why. Of the rest, the carrots grow pleasingly, and I harvest about 15 of them, all of which are about the size of my thumb. I yield about 5 potatoes, which are yummy and which I make chips with, along with the bag of Maris Pipers that I bought from Tesco. The cauliflour plants yield pretty flowers, then they shrink and commit suicide. Basically, I have no idea what I am doing. I look at TV footage of Nigel Slater's extraordinarily professionally laid out cottage garden, with his greens and carrots and potatoes and courgettes and whatever all laid out in rows with little ditches in between and I practically salivate before I remember that it is highly unlikely that Mr Slater is tending his garden without help. Growing veg is not easy. Do not believe the back pages of the supplements. They require good soil, loads of water or not much water ie read the instructions and google lots of background information. They need lots of sun, especially tomatoes. They need constant attention to weeds and insects. If organic then ridding your veg plants of these insects is tortuous. If not organic, then you can nuke them with a good old spray of something evil from your local Homebase, but then it slightly defeats the object to be growing your own veg in the same way most supermarkets source their mass produced homogenous, freeze dried crap. This year I have had a major makeover in my garden - part of my programme of activities designed to help ease the pain of loss after my sister died of cancer last Autumn, eight months ago - and soil enrichment being part of the garden designer's plan, I am growing veg like it's coming out my ears. Salad has taken over my planet. Peas are rampant along the fence. Courgettes are flowering like there is no tomorrow. Pak choi has been served in two stir fries and counting. Herbs, herbs, herbs. Who knew frying sage made for such a yummy garnis? Who even knew I would be using a word like garnis?  Growing your own is 95% effort, to 5% eating satisfaction. But that 95% can count for so much if you have the enthusiasm for it.  I cradle my handful of baby carrots to the unfeeling derision of my family and think, yeah but I GREW these! By myself! With backache, spider bites, jagged fingernails, and gardener's bum to prove it. I am a Provider.  Oooh look, Bridget Jones Diary is on TV. Pass the remote.

Control pants

I have a really big family "function" coming up. I love that word, function. South Africans use it all the time to describe formal events. In UK English it sounds comfortably archaic, it's down there with lavender pincushions, taffeta frocks and Hats For Church. But this is without doubt a Function. Not a party, which is a thing you can take or leave, you can turn up in it wearing whatever the hell you like, you bring a bottle, chat, dance, and stagger out again at 4am, or leave after 5 minutes for the next party. No. This is a 3 day affair, akin to a Hindu wedding, with multiple lunches, lots of formal photographs, lots of ethnic dancing, lots of air kissing and real hugging. I have my Outfits lined up as a key player in this Function, and as the only female in the central cast of actors I need to make my mark. And making my mark includes keeping my jelly belly in tight control. I have an uncertain relationship with my flabby belly. On the one hand, I've had two kids, I like my food, and caesarian section tends to result in an overhang you simply have to get used to unless you are Elle McPherson or Victoria Beckham who judging from the photographs appear to have mistaken the c section for a tummy tuck. On the other hand, I exercise 5 days a week, I work hard at it, I vary my exercise to keep my body working hard, I eat loads of fresh, raw vegetables, I run around a lot for work, I am not naturally sedentary so it feels just a little unfair. Of course the answer is that is where the fat goes, and carefully targeted abs exercise do not remove the fat, they just strengthen the abs. Not the same thing at all. Under my jellified tummy I  have fabulous stamina, I can do hundreds of sit ups, hold the plank position forever, and I still win a fight with my kids, one of whom is close to twice my height. In the gym, I'll be frank with you, I have no problem with letting it all hang out. If I can't wear what I like when I'm sweating over the dumbbells, where the hell can I. I am bemused on a daily basis by the women at the gym near my workplace who spend hours, literally ages, prepping their hair for the spin class. I came into the gym on Thursday to go swimming, walked into the changing room past a woman who was blow drying her hair. When I came back from the pool and shower an hour later, she was still bloody well there. The gym near my work attracts the kind of woman who wears a thong or a frilly g string and clearly does not mind the way it saws into her bumcrack; who puts makeup on for hours wearing said thong and little else; and whose body has clearly never seen the inside of a maternity ward. Me, I vote for control pants to achieve my business like silhouette. And for a Function, these control pants are an absolute Necessity, a staple to increase my confidence for all these photo sessions. Having blogged previously about the boredom of shopping at M&S for bras, I have no problem at all displaying my inconsistency when it comes to control pants. I do not care what they look like at all. Control pants are entirely functional underwear (unless you are Daniel Cleaver from Bridget Jones's Diary fame and have a fetish for the things, which is just weird).  I head to M&S where you can buy them in black, flesh or white, with minimal decoration. The package might as well just say, it covers your tum and pulls in your bum. Funny isn't it, that the marketing bods feel the need to dress up its functional role in pretty language so you can fool yourself you are buying these things because you prefer them to the boy short or the high leg. "Sexy panel pants". Ooo-kaaay. I pick up black ones, three of them - that should see me through my three days of Functions - and join the queue to pay for them. The woman behinds me peeks over my shoulder. Function, is it, she says, sympathetically. I'm tempted to tell her I wear them to vaccuum my house but what's the point. She's there for exactly the same reason. So I smile and tell her about my Function, and she congratulates me and we talk girlie dresses and matching shoes, and I pay and leave. I bring them home, put them straight on, pull my Function Outfit Number 1 out of the wardrobe and put it on. The dress glides over my hips perfectly, all lumps ironed out. I'm proud of my body, bumps and all. But there are just times when I need it to cinch itself into shape just a bit more efficiently than exercise or a carbs ban can achieve, no matter what those stupid magazine articles tell you. Got my control pants. I'm happy.

Orthopaedic outpatient clinics

There cannot be many places more stressful, disempowering, or generally desolate, than an orthopaedic outpatients clinic. For reasons of convenience, these tend almost always to be located very close to Accident and Emergency, as of course many A and E admissions are related to falls people have had that have fractured wrists or fingers or broken arms or legs. An outpatient coming for a timed appointment, always has to give way to A and E admissions, and the registrars and consultants you are there to see, also have to see the A and E patients. All of which means, that the average waiting time on a good day is usually around an hour. Forty five minutes, if you're lucky. On a bad day it can be up to three hours. And that's three hours before you're called to a cubicle. Not, three hours till you're actually dealt with. If you need an x ray, you have to queue behind A and E patients to have one. Then wait another hour till the overtaxed registrar has a chance to look at it and see what the problem is. By the time you are finally seen by him (they are all male, these registrars), he is exhausted, and so are you. All the sensible questions you had lined up have disappeared into the cotton wool that your brain has turned into; you are overwhelmed with lassitude and perilously close to tears.

So, orthopaedic outpatients needs a coping strategy. I've had to go to this clinic more times than I care to remember and each time in the early days, I would tell myself, no that was just a freak day. This one will be better. But it isn't. It never is. So after around the 4th or 5th day wasted in the underground bunker - oh did I also mention that the clinic I attend is in the basement, which means no natural light and no mobile phone reception - also nowhere to get a cup of tea without climbing stairs, which if you are on crutches, strongly likely if you are an orthopaedic patient, then no hope in hell of getting there, or queueing for half an hour for a packed lift that has no seating? - anyway, after the 4th or 5th time I decided I needed a game plan. First, provisions. Three to four hours in that clinic meant I would invariably get hungry or just really, really need a cup of tea. So, thermos flask, decent sized sandwich filled with things that would not fall out and stain my t shirt (ie no egg mayonnaise, tuna mayonnaise, or anything remotely wet), a bag of raw vegetables to snack on, a bag of nuts for when the veg ran out, and a large bar of Cadburys Dairy Milk if all of the above had been despatched and I was still waiting. Secondly, exposure to light. Three hours in a lightless bunker sends you do-lally. The only way through is to stock up on light. How to do this? My hospital is one of the ugliest buildings in the world. But, it is located just 5 minutes' walk from Hampstead Heath, which is beautiful, full of birds with wonderful song in their throats, and loads of wild flowers to gawp at. I decide to walk to hospital, from my house, which is about an hour away on foot, through the Heath. By the time I get there, I am muscle weary but the soul is full of nature. And finally, Things To Do. I download every possible publication I want to read, on to my I Pad. You can't listen to music in orthopaedic outpatients. Miss a nurse calling your name and you're stuffed. Name sent to the bottom of the list. So it has to be books, or games, anything you can do that does not require headphones. I download creative apps that stop my brain from shrivelling, which a 45 min wait outside an x ray theatre can do to you. On my 6th visit I put the Grand Plan into action. I walk to the hospital. I rest, gratefully and feeling fabulous, in my chair. I take out my sandwich and my thermos of tea. I switch on my IPad and open up The Times. I take a bite and settle down to read the opinion piece. And what happens? I'm called. After five minutes. This. Is Sod's Law.