Hmm. Sooner or later I had to write something on this topic and go out a little on a limb (or insert your own pun related euphemism). On Thursday I’ll be removing my clothes and running round London Zoo with a few hundred complete strangers in a silly attempt to raise some money for the ZSLs conservation programmes.

Now Zoos are not my favourite thing – animals should not be used for entertainment. However, the best ones are now doing some very interesting work with conservation in the wild as well as the captive breeding and reintroduction programmes people are more familiar with. For example, Cincinnati zoo’s programme to protect lions by preventing clashes between the big cats and the Maasai with their cattle herds by first tracking the lions and getting the livestock to only go to the (shared) water holes at different times – effectively removing the temptation – is a great piece of work and a good way to look at how the solution to a problem might be actually quite simple.

Thankfully the conditions for most species have improved and frankly, you need to look at things species by species. For example I have serious issues with most marine mammals in captivity with the exception of manatees – as when your lifestyle involves mostly sitting on the sea bottom chomping sea grass you might as well be in a huge tank – at least you are safe from motor boats running you over, which is the main threat we present them in the wild.

So anyway – I’ve had a number of facial expressions thrown in my direction on this ranging from a raised eyebrow to incredulous looks of horror. I think the horrified end of the spectrum would rather run the marathon than a brief streak in the altogether. But it is like that, it is literally a very personal and individual thing. I guess for me the challenge is complete lack of body confidence and the need to remind myself occasionally that I should love the skin I’m in. I have had one previous experience of that back in 2011 where I was part of a charity skinny dip in Wales – 413 people of all ages and sizes diving off a freezing beach in the Gower for Marie Curie cancer care. It was hilarious and most people could not stop laughing, because it made you feel like a five year old, silly and very temporarily, care free (until the cold kicks in). At the time it was an official world record too; I have the certificate to prove it from Guinness, although I believe it has been since been overtaken by a bunch of New Zealanders. So it was fun and I’m hoping for a similar atmosphere on Thursday.

But, I don’t think I could ever cope with a naturist beach. I think some friends of mine have thought that odd – nay, inconsistent – but in the end I would find that a bit too weird. Skinny dipping and the like relies in the one off nature of it all and you don’t want to have time to think about it; I do not think I would ever feel entirely comfortable being unclothed all the time, except perhaps with the closest of friends. But even then, the shared awkwardness would probably destroy any element of fun to be derived.

So those who know me well; don’t worry. You can just ignore it and I’m intending to behave as discretely as anyone else outside of events and perhaps secluded swimming places where there is no one there to offend. That’s not acceptable for any reason. I am going to call it rule number one – do not inflict your naked form on anyone who is not a consenting adult.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the Lovely Wife is not joining me, and would rather gnaw off her own leg. She will be sitting in a cafe drinking tea and steadfastly ignoring everything until I am presentable again. Rule number two… Always ensure you have someone trustworthy to look after your clothes, because, inevitably, someone thinks it funny to run off with them.

And if you do want to help ZSL projects then please do sponsor me. https://www.justgiving.com/Graham-Wilson4/

We recently had the pleasure of dinner at a rather quirky restaurant/bar called Circus which was hiding away on the fringes of Covent Garden. The resident quirk is that every 40 minutes or so they turn the lights off and some house performers appear on a large stage/table and proceed to eat fire or balance in probably impossible ways on a support to increasingly lubricated and therefore appreciative dining audience. Of course you have to watch – it is so dark in the place even with the lights on that trying to continue eating your red curry while the performance is happening is only asking for trouble. It is rather charming, and the young performers pretty talented.

Obviously this is themed to go with the name of the place. But of course one type of circus entertainment was missing. There were no clowns.

We found this reassuring. We do not like clowns, you see.

Now, I do not mean people talented in the area of physical comedy. That is something entirely different and I can laugh at a pratfall or a whack on the head with a spinning plank as much as anyone. I mean the whole white face/orange hair and outsize clothing weirdness.

Clowns are creepy and sinister and not at all funny. It is not surprising they turn up in horror movies a lot (the clown doll on the chair in Poltergeist is a personal scare favourite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWDDoydceVg , although why the kid has such a horrible thing in his bedroom in the first place is beyond me, but then it was made in the 80s and it is not a decade know for taste and discretion).

But I had not really thought about rally what is behind the dislike. It is not just that I do not find them funny. There are plenty of things – and comedians – that I do not find particularly funny, but I would not accuse (most) of them for being creepy. I think it has dawned on me recently though, and the problem is a lack of humanity.

We are going to see King Lear at the weekend (a bundle of laughs itself I know) and one of the key characters in that play is the Fool. The fool or jester in medieval times always seemed to me as a reflection of ourselves, literally poking fun at our own inadequacies and weaknesses that we know perfectly well exist but we would rather not confront in any more direct ways. But most clowns are not reflections of our human condition and rather painted macabre creations of their own, hiding behind makeup as much as if they were wearing a mask.

A few years ago I ran the Great North Run in a horse suit, which included an all encompassing headpiece. The lovely Wife noted that she found it extremely off putting when I put the head on, because at that point I vanished. As she said, there could be anybody at all – or nobody for that matter – in the suit at that point. The mask removed my humanity and replaced it with a visage of fake equine. Incidentally, that was a day when I think I may have finally learned to truly hate the ‘why the long face?’ joke. Runners are not the most creative wits in the world it appears (although I’ll give the guy who grabbed my arm claiming that he was ‘feeling a bit horse’ at least a B+ for effort).

So I think it is the mask effect. They may indeed be very comfortable and soon everyone will be wearing one, but I do not see the fetid pale paste of the clown becoming more widespread, outside of a possible zombie apocalypse. I think it is perfectly fine to avoid things that disturb you sometimes; so together with reality TV shows and Michael Bay movies I think I’ll give the clowns a miss, if you don’t mind.

First a quick follow up to last week. Generally more things seem to have eaten the caterpillars then they have eaten our vegetables, though I am not sure any of our green will win awards for beauty. I just think it is fun growing them, and the red currant harvest was as good as last year’s so the problem is now what I can do with the things. The preserve cupboard (yes, I have one) is still pretty full from last year.

Some people who probably do not eat as much jam are ballet dancers. Or maybe they do. Certainly they expend a lot of energy bouncing elegantly over the stage. I have never been really into ballet, although I suppose being from the home of Billy Elliot I probably should always had an inner drive to put on the tights. The Lovely Wife is fond of any kind of dancing so we do go sometimes, most recently to see ‘Coppelia’ – which for those who, like me, had no idea what it was about, is a slightly odd but amusing tale of toymakers, unlikely lovers (the male protagonist seems to prefer a doll for goodness sake, and his intended seems not to mind once her rival is shown to be made of wood) and a resolution where everything is OK with a few dances, a bag of money and some beer – and I was surprised to find I enjoyed it immensely.

I know that sounds like damning with faint praise. But I am not a fan of ballet as an art form normally. I can appreciate it to be clear; I admire the fitness, skill, strength and grace of the dancers. I think the music is often wonderful. But put together… It just does not usually work for me. I was trying to work out why all these good elements just do not quite click with me.

I think it is lack of plot.

So for example with ‘Coppelia’ there are three acts, with the last act being the wedding. By this point the plot is pretty much over and it is a series of dances by various guests and the principals and a tiny amount of last minute drama, quickly forgotten, and then it is back to happy dances again. I can feel my eyes glaze over as yet another set piece is executed, but there is no progression. I found this to be a bit of a shame as I really enjoyed the first two acts, which were full of humour… Now, I know it is a short ballet relatively thinking and it did end before I started looking at my watch, but really I would prefer something shorter and concise – the attitude seems to be that if it doesn’t last for 3 + hours somehow you have been short changed. Now I can concentrate for that length of time – goodness, sitting through any Peter Jackson Middle Earth movie enforces that – but only if the plot keeps moving. So I do not think I’m ever going to be a big fan of the ballet, or indeed opera, which also has a tendency to be (in my opinion) overlong and have too many moments where nothing happens very much and what you have is a lot of beautiful music; but I would rather sit in my own armchair to listen to such music than to be cramped into a balcony and worrying about the train home.

That said – I’ve booked for The Nutcracker at Christmas. But then that’s a fluffy one and we are going to a matinee… And it’s Christmas.

I do not think that I am ever going to really be a fervent fan, but I’m glad I’ve the opportunity to go and see such things; that is something that most people I know do not have the opportunity to do so.

Now excuse me while I try practising impressive lifts on the Lovely Wife. I might even ask her first.

So what do you do when the caterpillars start to eat your broccoli?

I have a very inconsistent approach it seems versus invertebrates that attack the plants that we have, at cost and expense – mostly of time – put in our garden. The latest difficulty is that now we have a bunch of burgeoning Brassicas of various types putting down some serious growth and spreading enticements of fresh home grown vegetables to be enjoyed at some point. But we hit a snag recently.

The Lovely Wife noticed her first. White and pure, hanging around the vegetable trough, fluttering her wings as if protesting her innocence. But this was no virgin. No, it was a female cabbage white and she was systematically laying small clumps of her yellow eggs on the purple sprouting broccoli and the cauliflower. Oddly, she was entirely avoiding the cabbage. I have suggested that because she is a Middle Class St Albans resident the concept of letting your offspring feed on mere cabbage is just not on… ‘Only the best purple sprouting broccoli for my little dears’ I hear her cry while complaining that the Tortoiseshells are bringing the neighbourhood down.

So we checked yesterday and they have begun to hatch. And the holes are appearing and they are growing quickly.

So now we are confronted by the question of what to do.

I have to say, to some creatures in the garden, no quarter is shown. I have very little guilt about eliminating slugs and greenfly, and judging from the never ending waves of attacks – a kind of slimy version of ‘Plants versus Zombies’ springs to mind – I’m not making much of a population impact and the voracious crawling things do indeed seem intent on destroying everything we put in to make our garden look more like a planned garden and less like a wilderness. So war was declared.

But butterflies are pretty. Slugs are not. Unless you are a slug specialist I suppose in which case you probably find them endlessly fascinating, but I am not one of those.

So we compared the options. Well, we could try and clip off all the eggs we could find, and kill the caterpillars. We did consider moving them all away from the main patch and relocate them on a sacrificial cabbage somewhere else in the garden. This second plan appealed as it sounded more humane – and I like the idea of a ‘sacrificial cabbage’. Or we do nothing and watch them chomp through the vegetables.

Well, for now we have chosen the third approach, and we are feeling reasonably good about it. In the end, most of the vegetables we have planted are not yet putting forth the parts we actually intend to eat so on the whole the holes are not so much of a problem. Secondly, the constant presence of our robins and blackbirds in the garden is a reminder that together with a host of invertebrate predators – the leaves are also crawling with spiders – most of Mrs White’s offspring are going to end up as lunch for something anyway. Finally, it gives us something to watch and I’m looking forward to examining the leaves for pupae soon for the first time in about 30 years. It is not a good attitude if you want fine garden greens I know; but it kind of feels better and anyway, I won’t notice the holes when the leaves are eventually stir fried or whatever (probably with bacon).

So I don’t know. I may be going soft. The thought does pass through my mind that I am now going to stand around now and let the roses fade under the onslaught of the aphid horde in the hope that the few ladybirds in the garden decide to pig out one afternoon. Or maybe I’ll just be nice to my butterflies, as a better class of pest.

Well, the Canadian adventure is over for now, and I’ve had a chance to catch up with friends in Cincinnati. Once I have finally manage to sort out arrangements in the chaos that seems to be the internal flight system in the US – where no one seems to know what is going on and times or indeed the existence of flights seems to be a distinct variable – I can get home.

I’m starting to feel homesick, I realised in the last few days. I knew there was a problem when I started to look at the fairly uniformly black (and therefore slightly sinister) squirrels in Ottawa and fondly look forward to reacquainting myself with my own British grey vermin. Visiting new places is fun, but after a while the novelty starts to wear off, and once the distracting hurly burly of work is done all that is left is just a feeling of being out of place, especially stuck alone in a hotel room.

But it has been an interesting lesson for me in Canadian history and in the current political environment and how it holds together as a country. I found it positive and upbeat, and the contrast with the airport here where I am stuck in Chicago versus the cheery Ottawa I left almost wants to make me get on the plane back there. Almost – it is not home after all. I was interested in a number of things notably:

1. Elizabeth II is queen of Canada. Now, I knew that of course but it was slightly odd to hear it several times over the last week. My reaction to seeing all the portraits in the Parliament building there was ‘aren’t they offended by all these British monarchs?’ And maybe some are. But to the Canadians I met she is their queen. The fact she is queen of a lot of other places and based in Britain seems largely irrelevant. The attitude seems less of rejecting the past and more of looking forward and I think that’s a good place to be.
2. I did not have time to really go into the current relationship between the impact of the Europeans and latter immigrant waves and the indigenous peoples of Canada, but one thing I did notice was the denomination of ‘First Peoples/Nations’ to describe the diverse types of people there before the British and the French arrived. It seems clever to me – innately respectful, and again a lot of what I saw was less about apportioning guilt for past misdeeds, of which there are many, and more in terms of accepting the history and art of those people within the history of this country called Canada, rather than grafting on some second age and leaving the older cultures as something past, even anachronistic. It’s not perfect as an appellation but it seemed better than some I have heard in the past.
3. Canadians seem fond of imagery. A lot of the First People art is filled with imagery and it seems impossible to find anything major in formal Canadian architecture and such that does not also drip with additional meaning – as my very cheerful (half Egyptian) Canadian guide pointed out as she showed me around the Governor General’s official residence, even the fountain out the front, when looked at from above, is the shape of the medal awarded to the Order of Canada, which itself is in the shape of a snowflake – because we are all unique. Charming.
4. Finally, I came across a stuffed animal in the Nature museum – a wee beastie called a Fisher, about half the size of its bigger relative, the wolverine, who apparently is one of the few animals that hunt porcupines. The museum says that they apparently dance around them nipping at the nose until the prey becomes so agitated it gives the Fisher and opening to flip it over and get at the unprotected belly. Unfortunately I have since found out it is more just the case they stay in front of it and bite its head until the porcupine dies. A lot less romantic (and acrobatic).

So thank you Canada for teaching me an animal I didn’t know, getting me far too over excited at just seeing a wild chipmunk, and giving me some food for thought. I’ll probably be back, if only for the poutine.

My French is rubbish. I blame my language unfriendly British 80s education.

I grew up in a time when language was taught like history and equally poorly, with emphasis on grammar and form and less on actually speaking the thing (my analogy with history is that I recall it all being a series of facts and not enough on why history matters, how it forms and moulds societies and why mistakes of the past are probably going to happen again – people are people). So give me a French newspaper and I can follow it pretty well, but when confronted by having to perform anything but the most basic conversation my mouth remains open and silent like a dead goldfish and I begin to panic.

Especially when I did not expect it – as I found out this weekend when I arrived in Ottawa. I had booked what seemed a well located hotel for the meetings I am here to attend and was greeted by a smiling young lady at reception, just what I needed after 13 hours travelling. And then she ruined it by talking to me in French. Weirdly, I almost never get that from hotel staff in Brussels, but then I had managed to book on the Quebec side of the river, so I should have expected it. Because I am not in Ottawa, I’m in Gatineau.

I should also be used to this as well – I mean I was born in Gateshead and ask anyone born up there it matters which side of the Tyne you come from. You share the river, but you are a different palace, if only separated by only a few minutes walking across the bridge. It reminds me of the New Year holiday we spent a few years ago which was in an old canal workers cottage (obviously?) on the edge of the canal. If you ran along the towpath to the left of the front door very soon you came to a viaduct across a flat valley (or is it an aqueduct since it carries a canal as well as a path? Too confusing for today… Let’s ignore that for now). Anyway, as you go out onto the duct thing you have a cheerful sign telling you that you are now going into Wales. In Welsh first of course on the English side and vice versa on the other side. Personally I didn’t see the point of a sign like this in what is almost the middle of nowhere but there you go. I’m sure the makers of signs are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of a possible ‘Yes’ in the Scottish independence referendum later in the year for all extra signs they are going to have to put up to show that somehow we are now different from each other having got along perfectly well with our own cultural identities for the last few hundred years without needing to be political about it.

My problem with my current location, and my lack of decent language skills, is that I want to talk to people here the way they want to. I want to pronounce the place names correctly. It shows respect and makes me feel less stupid, in the way I know visitors to the UK feel when their English is not very good – or even if it is – they fall victim to the level of ridiculous irregularity and inconsistency in my language, especially when applied to place names. Even the English cannot agree who to pronounce Shrewsbury and as far as I am concerned there is no ‘r’ in Newcastle. But hey, I can feel that by Northern blood is rising so I’d better stop before I start campaigning for the reinstatement of Northumbria as a separate country (which I will rule from my fortress of Bamburgh Castle. Ah the dreams of the eight year old fantasist never truly die).

So apologies to my lovely Canadian hosts with my paucity of language skills. Be patient with me and I’ll get there in the end. Or I will just smile and make a quick exit before it becomes too embarrassing.

This weekend I was at an excellent birthday garden party where there were a number of children. One of the more amusing moments was watching two sisters – both in their tweens – running around shooting each other to death with Nerf guns. They both seemed to have an unlimited appetite for firing foam projectiles at each other and then providing graphic explanations of what, at least in their fantasies, the terrible wounds these weapons of mass destruction had inflicted. Briefly they ganged up on another boy (he asked for it) but soon went back to the preferred activity of taking each other out (until, inevitably, one of them actually got hit where it hurt, resulting in the elder of the two pretending ignorance to her mother before giving me a look of smug satisfaction). Now, from conversations with several people, this scenario is extremely recognisable as being similar to much of their childhood. This concept that your siblings are both the preferred target and occasional ally seems to be universal, the weapons and severity may change but the principle seems quite constant to me. My father for instance grew up with a large number of uncles and aunts. The general principle was this – they had a go at each other, but if anyone outside the family criticised any sibling then the ranks were closed and whichever unfortunate who had had the audacity to say something negative about a brother or sister would find united and terrible wrath aimed in their direction. I recall vividly Christmas day in the afternoon, when I would be sent over the road with my Grandmother to see my Great Aunt – her sister. Usually things would be fine for about a sherry and a piece of cake. But if the visit reached certain time duration – let’s call it the ‘second sherry stage’ I quickly began to realise that trouble was brewing. The smiles started to fade and the conversation would become shorter, snappier and blunt. My Grandfather – when he was around – and I would start to get uncomfortable and look at our watches, wondering at what point we could reasonably suggest rejoining my parents. I had always assumed that I was sent over the road in an effort to get everyone else out of the house to allow my parents a brief moment of Christmas day on their own; while I am sure they took advantage of that, I suspect now I was sent in much the same way as boron rods are plunged into a nuclear reactor to keep the reaction at a controllable level, as open warfare would not break out when I was in the room. On that, at least, both these (utterly lovely and sorely missed by me) relatives of mine could agree. So I just ate more delicious cake and waited. Do I feel short changed not having had any siblings? No, and it is a bit of dumb rhetorical question as with a lot of things in life there are positives and minuses and we are all a product of our upbringings. I never missed having a brother or sister as a child, and I am not sure I would have found the inevitable competition something to relish. However, it does mean that no one else is there to help take responsibility when close family are ill or need attention, and recent events affecting the Lovely Wife’s slightly larger family have shown how brothers and sisters can share support in a way that is incredibly effective. And you always have someone to blame when you are a child when things go wrong (hard luck first born children – you’re always going to be the one that is old enough to know better). But the biologist in me says this is all very normal and healthy, providing there is balance, and I firmly believe that providing the home environment is a good one, the relationship has a better chance of not considering murder on a daily basis. In fact I know some sibling relationships that seem so close and harmonious I have to wonder what’s going on there, and rather hope that behind closed doors the claws sometimes come out. Maybe I should buy them some Nerf guns.

Well the longest day is over and we now descend once more into the depths of winter. I have been told off enough by the Lovely Wife about being the voice of doom recently that my inner five year old just wants to keep repeating it, in the same way a child might parrot a rude word.
Together with the reminder that Christmas is just around the corner.
Seriously though, where is the time going?
The rational part of my brain is reminding me that in terms of minutes, hours and days it has not changed and that the time between Jools Holland declaring that the New Year has arrived (must try and get tickets to one of those recordings one day – must be very odd getting a full studio to pretend it is New Year, considering it is recorded in mid December) and the other major event of the year (the Doctor Who Christmas episode, obviously) has stayed the same. But it seems as though everything is accelerating and I think in terms of the pace of life that is certainly the case. We are moving faster, even if the clocks continue to plod on as they always have.
I think part of the problem – if there is one – is that we have been facilitated in the speed of everything we do and many of us have a problem in not filling spare capacity.
Back in 2012, before the London Olympics, the section of the M25 that I frequent was expanded to improve the transport links around the games. When the road works were finished there was a blissful period of about six months when there was a great new wide road and the same amount of traffic and my commute had never been easier. Now, two years on, it has never been worse. The road is the same, the problem is that traffic has increased to fill the capacity and we are back to square one; or perhaps worse.
Information Technology has done the same for our work place, and in some cases, our social lives. I recall a speaker coming to give a talk on the future and on innovation, maybe ten years ago. One of the comments he made stuck in my head as being disturbingly valid. Computers, he said, were lauded as the saviour of the human race. There would be an explosion of art and creativity as suddenly we all had a lot more free time – those helpful, clever computers would do it all for us, faster than before, leaving us to do more interesting things.
Seems silly now, but I think I recall that kind of feeling in the early days. In reality, like the motorway, as the systems improve and create more and more capacity in an illusion of making it easier for us, that capacity just keeps filling up. Because we are not doing the same amount of work, but faster and more efficiently – because it is faster and more efficient we are doing more work.
So I think we are speeding through life a lot faster. To be clear – I am not saying this is a bad thing necessarily. The opportunity to achieve more than we ever could before in a lifetime is there like never before, but the pressures of the time and the constant pulls on our body and intellect also are considerable and increasing. I have confidence in the amazing biology that make up our forms to cope with this up to a point. But as technology moves on at a seemingly exponential rate, is this going to become a real selection pressure on the human species, the ability to run fast enough to keep up with it? Are we speeding up the treadmill as a species so fast we are going to fall off the back of it in an embarrassing heap?
I think I might just go and spend an hour tonight in the garden listening to the birds and watching the damselflies dance over the pond. With the phone switched off. And try very hard not to think of the billion other things (it feels) I should be doing.

We spent a good fifteen minutes watching the hare.

It did not really seem to want to move initially, I expect that it was up wind of us and did not smell my deodorant. When it did realise we were there it began to lollop (is that a word? I guess so, as the spellchecker seemed to like it) away gently as we walked up the hill peering it through the binoculars the Lovely Wife had remembered to bring. It was a special moment with a fine animal – normally the closest view is its bottom as it speeds away.

But really we shouldn’t have seen it at all. If we have come the right way up from the beach, following the path the walk book intended, we would probably have not seem anything. We went wrong and got rewarded for it. That’s when the universe does strange things to me and plays with my head.

I think we all have examples. Cases where we have missed something (let’s say a train, Sliding Doors style) perhaps, and gone onto have an adventure that has become formative in our development. Or perhaps meet someone that turns out, in the long term, to be a good friend. Or you just happen to meet someone at a party who happens to know someone who has a position for someone just like you.

I think it is interesting to think through whether this is just luck or something else. When I think about luck I do not mean some kind of finite source of blessing dispensed by the goddess Fortuna. What I tend to thin of is something that just happens and that you are caught up in and then you can either be impacted in a positive or negative way – or perceive it in one of those ways.

For example, I take the hare incident positively and I am therefore focussing on the wildlife moment rather than on the extra half mile that added to an already long walk (including a dodgy section along a busy road). We were ‘lucky’ to see a hare at relatively close quarters or, if you prefer, ‘unlucky’ to miss the correct footpath and end up with more muscle ache.

I know where I am on this particular case, but another’s take might be different.

I think an awful lot of the world is up to us to perceive and take solace or offence from as we decide.

But I think it is a mistake to see this as all being a bit random. I could invoke higher powers… But I am not on that soap box. What I mean is that we bias the events and outcomes all the time without thinking about it.

For example, I could argue that we saw the hare because we (1) went out for a walk in the country, and there are plenty of hares up there in Norfolk (2) we were walking a long way, away from most of the other visitors, so there was less chance of a shy animal being scared by the rest of the humans in the area – indeed we were somewhere really we shouldn’t have been, all things considered, and the poor beastie probably was more surprised than we were at the encounter and (3) one of the reasons we were out was to look for wildlife so we were attuned to any opportunity that did arise (although admittedly we were mostly expecting interesting birds).

That’s only three reasons why the encounter starts to look increasingly less random and much more, well, expected. It doesn’t make it any less special, though.

In the end I think I am blessed (and you can decide yourself whether you take that in the general or the theological sense) to have an interest in pretty much anything and taking a joy in the world I find myself in all its incredible diversity and beauty. If I was lucky in any way this weekend it was in being able to see the situation in a positive light because the rewards of that I think are richer and long lasting. I would like to be able to transfer that feeling to more areas of my life, and to find the way to perceive as much as possible of that to be a happy accident.

I think my favourite moment of the commemoration of D-Day last weekend was a brief piece of footage on the BBC showing William and Kate chatting with some of the veterans who had made the trip to Normandy for the occasion. The Duke of Cambridge appeared to be engaged in an earnest and I suspect technical discussion with one man. Kate was of course surrounded by a large group of old soldiers who looked very pleased indeed to be addressed by a nice young woman – whoever she might be. At that point I laughed, because while these are a group of old soldiers now, they were once young soldiers – teenagers and in their 20s at the time of the landings – and interest in young ladies never dies I think.

One of the nice things about last Friday was also that, albeit briefly, a lot of people recaptured the respect for the older generation that since my childhood at least feels that it has been slowing ebbing away.

It probably harks back a good decade or so before but as younger people we seem to see the old increasingly as nothing but a burden. We are all so busy these days – whether we have children or not – that finding time to spend with our elder relatives seems something increasingly hard to manage. Let us be honest. They just repeat the same old attitudes and stories don’t they? The same old stuff we have heard many times before. We are not really enticed to go and let them relive their lives when we can be somewhere else living ours for the first time.

And yet, I know this is my fault. All relationships are two way streets and if I see an older person as a bore and a burden it is probably because I have not thought about what are the best questions to ask. Someone who has lived for seventy years has a wealth of memories that they can tap into. I know that as a forty something. More interestingly they are memories of time that no longer exists in just the same way as there is no one you can ask about what it really was like to live in a Roman town. No, really. Going back to the D-Day events one of the statements repeated constantly was that this was likely to be the last time such an event happened because, in reality, soon there will be no one who lived through the second world war who is still with us, just as is pretty much already the case for the first world war. Much as they were terrible, these were two of the most significant events in European and World history – why would you not want to understand and appreciate these stories that soon will be lost to us? As I have blathered on before, and apologies for repeating myself, but late Nana, who passed away this year, had great stories of her youth during the war. I remember my Grandfather, who died many years ago now, showing me his photographs taken during the war and telling me, with tears in his eyes, about the time his gun turret – he was in the navy, mostly on Destroyers – was hit by a bomb killing all his mates. He was the only one left alive, with his eardrums blown but otherwise uninjured. In the next moment he was saying how beautiful the Norwegian fijords were, and how much he wanted to go back and see them again in peacetime (he was right, but he never did). And then he was showing me something he treasured, as I do now, which is the sailors headband from HMS Warspite*, certainly the most famous ship on which he served (and naughty Grandfather too as he certainly shouldn’t have had that). But honestly, he had so many stories, and apart from the fragments I remember they are now lost to us forever.

So I have a suggestion. Next time you have to see an elderly relative, think about what they lived through and ask them about their childhood, or how did they really meet your father, and what was he like as a young man, or ask them about their parents… Make them feel interested in what they have seen because I promise that they will say something that you didn’t know about them and will make you genuinely intrigued. Do it while you can. Like any bargain, they’re gone when they’re gone.

*By the way I was very happy to find out that the Warspite managed to sink herself off St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall on the way to be broken up at the end of her career. That was one lady that knew how to make an exit.