Lucy Melford

John Lennon liked to compose hard-hitting songs with great music that did not pull punches. Songs that were sometimes tender, sometimes with the twist of bitterness to them. I'd say that despite his more-than-occasional offensiveness, he was socially aware to a high degree, and that his eyes were opened still further by his talented wife, Yoko Ono, who gave him an insight into the condition of women.

One song comes to mind above all others. It's off the Some Time In New York City album of 1972, not generally reckoned to be the couple's most commercially successful effort, although it was a favourite of my brother's, and I do believe I've still got his original vinyl LP up in the attic. This album was produced in all sincerity to raise a clenched fist at social issues that complacent and comfortably-off people ought to be thinking about. The background is explained in the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Time_in_New_York_City.

The song? It's Woman is the Nigger of the World. If you want to be jarred out of your comfortable complacency, do give it a listen. Here is the YouTube video of the live stage performance in New York: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS78MX8Zmdk. And this is the rather more forceful recording studio version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asf4InKVo8k. John Lennon's voice and the sound of the saxophone are very good, even if you dislike the lyrics. But I think the lyrics are worth close study. Here they are:

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it...do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won't be a slave, we say that she don't love us
If she's real, we say she's trying to be a man
While putting her down, we pretend that she's above us

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave of the slaves
Ah, yeah...better scream about it

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that she's too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yeah...alright...hit it!

We insult her every day on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she's young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...if you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yes she is...if you believe me, you better scream about it

We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance

In the Wikipedia article on the song itself, it is said that 'The phrase "woman is the nigger of the world" was coined by Yoko Ono in an interview with Nova magazine in 1969 and was quoted on the magazine's cover. The song describes women's subservience to men and male chauvinism across all cultures.' Couldn't have put it better myself.

Wikipedia adds: 'The Lennons went to great lengths (including a press conference attended by staff from Jet and Ebony magazines) to explain that the word "nigger" was being used in an allegorical sense and not as an affront to black people.' And: 'Through radio and television interviews, Lennon explained his use of the term "nigger" as referring to any oppressed person.' I hope that's perfectly understood.

So the next question is this. That was in 1972. Does the song still have relevance in 2013? Forty one years later. Two generations further on. Surely times have changed, and we have all made progress.

Well, although there can't be many women in modern Western-type societies who will accept that home is the only place she should be, I don't observe many other departures from the 1972 scenario. There are a lot of men around in 2013 who still expect their women to look like sexy painted goddesses, who still expect their women to be subservient to all their wants and preferences, who still assume that women have fluff where their brains should be, who still think it right to force little girls into a standard female mould, who still feel no concern at advertisements that make women feel inadequate if they don't conform to a fashionable appearance, who still expect them to get pregnant so that they can be fathers to trophy children and prove they are real men, who still want their women to be accomplished and refined and dainty (and not free to relax and behave naturally), who still expect to have the casual right to fancy another, more attractive woman and betray their partners, who still think their own sexual needs are paramount, who still expect to be waited on hand and foot by a female partner. Who basically still think they are much more important than women, full stop.

And all men have discovered that if enough pressure is piled onto her, a woman's will is likely to crumble into tears of surrender - not because she is weak-minded or over-emotional, but because her conditioning from birth onwards has made her vulnerable to male coertion and control.

This is all a disgrace, but it's what obtains in 2013, just as it did in 1972, or any date you might care to name.

It doesn't help that women are still physically shorter and weaker than men. And still psychologically the second fiddle - though why that is I do not know, because there is no reason at all to feel intellectually inferior. Perhaps it stems from how societies are made up, the so-called 'natural division of responsibilities', that tends to place women in a slave role indoors: unpaid and put upon. The victims of many convenient assumptions that give men the best of it. Even in sunny Sussex.

I know one can point to Superwomen in all fields of endeavour, successful women, independent women, women who call the tune. But ordinary women in ordinary homes can fare badly. It is said that all a woman really wants is a home, children to raise, and a man - though that sounds to me like a man's assertion, not a woman's. It is certainly true that there are women about, a lot of them, who put up with all kinds of abuse from their partners without clearing out. They may be afraid, or psychologically dependent, or see nowhere else to run away to, but I do not agree that it's 'their fault'. We all have to live within society's framework, and any society in which women can be beaten up by men, or made to do unspeakable things for a man, is a sick society.

So on to another question: is this song still the authentic voice of feminism? Perhaps its terms are a bit old-fashioned now. We have all become more sophisticated and subtle. Gradually freedoms and legal rights have stacked up for women. Gradually it has become much less acceptable to grope women in pubs, slap them if they speak to another male, roger them at the office Christmas party, steal credit for their hard work, and deny them promotion. Gradually women have come more and more into important decision-making processes. But I can't help thinking that modern feminists have much to complain about. Legal equality may have been largely achieved, but what about social attitudes?

I have before me that epitome of civilised living, this month's Caravan Club magazine. It's full of happy pictures of Men Driving Cars That Tow Caravans, and Men Tinkering With Caravan Equipment, while the Ladies are making a nice cup of tea. Couples are shown with the Man holding a smaller Woman in his arms: she looks deliriously content in his firm and possessive embrace: he looks assured of a jolly good bonk in the very near future. That's why caravans have comfy beds and curtains, and corner steadies. Didn't you know? Or an older couple, standing with their arms around each other: a totally conventional picture, a myth perpetuated, a model to ape. Where are the lesbian couples? Where are the solo women caravanners like me?

So finally: is the song now relevant to the particular position of trans women? I can only speak for myself, but I'd say most definitely yes, because whatever view may be taken of my strict biological status, in the real world I am taken to be an ordinary woman, and come in for whatever stick is being handed out. I always knew it would be like this. While transitioning, I always expected mockery from men. Now I expect condescension. While transitioning, I felt highly visible to men. Dangerously so. Now I have become almost completely invisible to them, simply because I am old and unpretty, and therefore of no interest. Other women always give me a glance, we all give each other a once-over, but my plainness is reassuring; and if conversation develops, I am just one of the Sisterhood, another powerless sufferer in a world still dominated by men.

Well, not powerless in my own self-view. That male conditioning I had gives me an arsenal of secret weapons. I am not accustomed to abuse, and will bite back. I do assert any rights I might have. I don't crumble. I do strong. Even if it usually suits my book to seem gentle and compliant, no man is going to get the better of me. But I still have to live within society's current framework, and that means paying attention to the entrenched stereotyping that goes on. And all those things I listed above, the things that still seem to be the 'natural' assumptions of millions of men, have to be contended with. In such a way that I don't look like a ridiculous, troublesome, argumentative old hag.

Kermit the Frog thought it was not easy being green. It's even harder being a woman.

And now another flash of autobiography. A glimpse at my school reports when I was aged nearly nine and twelve and a half. You're going to see my name as a child of course, but that can't possibly matter now. It might after all be another person entirely, and not the me that now is, five decades on.

Remember, by the the time I was five I was encased in a protective armour of secrecy that I had fashioned for myself. I was difficult to know, a solitary child who never showed the world, not even her parents, the real child within. By twelve I was consumately practiced in the arts of dissemblance and secret subterfuge, as well as any courtier, resigned to playing a careful, low-profile game of survival inside an institution that I passionately disliked. My two objects: (a) to leave with enough educational ammunition to land a money-making job; and (b) simply to join the adult world that had been beckoning for a very long time, a world in which I would at last have some personal control over my young life, and not have to toe the line. But of course I did not see how unrealistic I was.

The grammar school I did time at was full of strict rules and competitive expectations. I saw that several of the masters who taught me also thought the ethos stifling and out of date, but they had to conform, keep quiet, and become part of 'the team'. I had enough intuition to see that some of them, such as the art and music masters, felt pretty uncomfortable with their position. It was very easy to spot the career masters, who aspired to become Head of their Department, and shaped their behaviour accordingly. I did not want to sell my soul like that. There must be more to life than being a hectoring martinet.

One or two masters of lesser ambition had instead written and published standard textbooks on this or that. For instance, Mr Colebourn, the Latin master, had published Latin Sentence and Idiom and Civis Romanus by the time I was there, and of course we used those books. They are still standard works in 2013. For the record, I liked Latin. It was an introduction to early Roman history (Romulus and Remus, and the tyrants) and Julius Caesar's descriptions of how he conquered Gaul (that's France nowadays). For O-level Latin we studied Virgil's Aeneid (which deals with the destruction of Troy, and the hero's subsequent wanderings around the Med). These were interesting academic diversions, although I hasten to add that I was rubbish at Latin, and couldn't get even a scrape pass at the exams. I was never any good at any exams at all, with the sole exception of my three A-Levels. More on that later. Of course, there was plenty of messing around. I remember, in 1966, when the Beatles' Yellow Submarine was in the charts, seeing 'We all live in a yellow navis longa' written indelibly inside my copy of Civis Romanus, a navis longa being a sea-going galley, vaguely like a Viking longship. I didn't call Mr Colebourn's attention to it. He would have spluttered with outrage, and had me caned, thinking that I was the culprit and stupid enough to give myself away. As if. Not this wary fox.

One thing I remember about Mr Colebourn was that when he sat down in front of the class, reading a passage from one of the textbooks, his trousers would ride up above his socks, and I couldn't help noticing how smooth and hairless his legs were for a man in his fifties. As if shaved. It was disturbing and distracting. Funny the things you recall.

So onto that school report at age nine, at Barry Island Junior Mixed. Here's the document:

Summer Term 1961. The young me had come third in a class of twenty-eight. The teacher Mr Roberts (his words signed off by head teacher Mr Davies - both good Welsh names!) had written 'Julian has attained a good position in class. He is a diligent and eager worker, and should be able to continue with this splendid effort.' Splendid effort...wow. So what had I done to deserve that? Very good conduct, never late. I'll grant him that. But despite the list of subjects, I was really being assessed only on English and Maths. He was right to give me top marks for English. I loved the subject. I probably earned hatred for my flawless reading ability, and alienation for being quick with apt and clever words. My maths mark looks slightly doubtful, though, and in point of fact I was a complete duffer at any figurework. I don't know what Mr Roberts based his '84 out of 100' on. He must have made it up.

Not that he went out of his way to be nice to any child. He was the teacher who forcibly stopped me reading any more Beatrix Potter - an incident described in my post Welcome to Melford Hall on 9 October 2010. I certainly never gave him any apples, nor sucked up to him in any way. I see him now, in my mind's eye, a middle-aged man in a small school, destined never to rise further in his career. Even Mr Davies the head teacher was never going to get higher. Dead end jobs. And the class was full of dead end pupils. I remember one dockworker's son, nicknamed Ocker, a big, lumbering boy. Big enough to push me around - but in fact we kept our distance. I respected his fists. He respected my tongue and my fierce face when threatened. He couldn't tell whether it was bluff or not. It was not: I would have seriously hurt him if he laid a hand on me. I had read how James Bond fought the ruthless agents of SMERSH. I was licensed to kill.

Three years later, after the family had moved from South Wales to Southampton, I was at Taunton's School, and my Autumn 1964 report was a glowing one:

Top of the form! I'd come up from far behind like a surprise Grand National outsider to beat twenty-eight other kids. I'd finished a losing twelth in the previous term's race. Dad's pencilled figures in the left-hand margin show how eagerly he and Mum tried to follow my school career. They must have been delighted with this result. Mum especially would have exulted.

But the report is full of holes. Even English was a contradiction: 'The grammar puzzles him at times, but his written work is most promising.' No surprise there. I've never been one for artificial analysis, and English Grammar at the time pulled sentences apart in a way that made no sense. I revelled only in free composition. The weak subjects were Latin, French, Science and Handicraft. The last bored me to death, but I'd wanted to do well at the others. I was finding that in a class of well-motivated pupils who had flown through their 11-Plus exam, I was an also-ran. And this was not even the brightest class for my year. But it was still pleasant to get a 'Congratulations!' from the peppery old headmaster. I did so much want to please my parents.

It was a high-water mark. From here on my form position gradually sank, to the puzzlement of the masters and the despair and shame of my parents. I lost heart. It was just too difficult to handle the horror of puberty and the pressures of term exams at the same time. I could never explain that to anyone. I sat on it. I pulled myself together just in time to get good grades in my A-levels in 1970. Here's the proof, on the slip of paper that was posted to me:

Geography: an A grade (actually with distinction). English Literature, a B grade. Art, another B grade, although if I hadn't trashed my still life, it would have been an A. Mum and Dad had something to celebrate again. Why not? I did it for them.

For myself, I hardly cared. My Art College course had been vetoed by my parents. I was destined for the Civil Service, already accepted in fact, bar some easy formalities. Dad had arranged it, and Mum wanted it for me. Forty-seven years of servitude lay ahead, then release at age sixty-five, with a pension. (I got remission for good behaviour, and served only thirty-five years)

I didn't think about all those - most of my year - who had gone off to university. I had deliberately not applied. But I thought much more of the few who had taken what is now called a gap year. One in particular had bought himself a guitar and gone to New Guinea on a social service project. New Guinea! Distant, exotic, primitive, life-changing. One could discover one's true self in a place like New Guinea. But it was too late to go, and I knew that I would not be allowed to. And I wasn't going to put up a fight. I fell in with my parents' wishes.

And so began decades of doing the conventional thing. Of doing what was expected, but wanting to do and become something else, though never quite formulating what that something else might be. It was no consolation to realise that most people have to squeeze themselves into the same standard mould, for better or worse. Very few ever manage to find a life that fits them properly.

I still mourn for New Guinea. Why, I might have learned to play the guitar quite well - and who knows what else.

My niece J--- phoned me a day or two ago. She'd just come back from holiday. It had in fact been her honeymoon.

She and her new husband K--- had gone to Iceland with just a handful of very immediate family on both sides, basically parents, and had got married with one of the famous waterfalls thundering away as a backdrop. Wow. What an incredible idea!

K--- had previously been her partner of about ten years. Both had very well-paid jobs in computer software. They could afford exotic holidays, and in fact I'd thought they would fly off to the Pacific for the event. Any children in sight? Oh no, she said - still two years off at least. They simply thought the right time had come to get properly hitched, with minimum fuss.

Not that I'd call two weeks in Iceland 'minimum fuss'! Iceland...a place I'd been dreaming of going to for thirty years past. It was still very high on my personal list of must-see holiday destinations. I already had a collection of books and maps for a trip there one day - but not of course the money, though that could be in place before I'm sixty-five. I thought it was an excellent place to get married in, and congratulated my niece for her choice of wedding venue - and how organised.

I wish I'd been able to have a skeleton guest list when I got married in 1983. But my Mum baulked at not inviting various aunts and uncles, and it was the same on W---'s side, and so it all got out of hand and a bit contentious. At one point Dad begged the two of us to 'just go off somewhere, and get the deed done and out of the way', and sidestep the frantic circus that it had all become. Not that my wedding was in any sense a fancy one: a register office, then a local dining pub; then a late-afternoon drive down to Shaftesbury in Dorset for the First Night; and then onwards across a frosty Dartmoor to a wintery honeymoon at Padstow in Cornwall. The only waterfalls there were the frozen ones in the cliffs. It was a very chilly February.

So, I asked my niece, what about a card and a wedding present? Absolutely not. Really. Everybody had been told the same. OK. But we will meet up again in North London after my West Country Tour, when of course the wedding photos will be available, and perhaps I can then take them out for lunch.

That wasn't the only hot family news though.

My nephew M--- and his partner C--- (they are also of about ten years standing, though not yet married) have released the information that their first baby - due at or around 17 September - will be a girl (how lovely). The name has been chosen, but is secret for now. C--- is doing well, with no problems. M--- is of course getting nervous. They are both fiercely independent, and have insisted on no money contributions from anyone. All the baby stuff is bought and ready for use. All well and good, I said to my sister-in-law G--- when we spoke on the phone, but a few months on, and the odd cheque for this and that might well be welcome! We'll all bide our time, and chip in as the need arises.

One thing that I found interesting is that M--- and C---- are deferring their own wedding until their child is walking and able to take part in the ceremony, the idea being that they will do it as a threesome, as a family unit - an event that the little girl will actually be able to remember. I think that's a wonderful idea.

They are still hoping to get married in a magnificent setting. Arundel Castle was the top choice when I last heard. I can't imagine they will really be able to afford such a venue, or should try to, when a decent flat of their own is a clear priority. But hey ho, it's their life, and if it is Arundel Castle then it'll be fairly local to me, and I can go to town with my wedding outfit.

Another thought: assuming the little girl is safely delivered, I shall become a great aunt. Great Aunt Lucy. I like it.

Actually, that's a pretty inaccurate post title. There was nothing to sign, and it won't necessarily be my last visit. But, subject to any future need to consult him, this was my last regular visit in a series that began in December 2008. I have now moved off Dr Curtis' 'active' list of patients, and will henceforth consult him only 'as needed', and will not see him at regular intervals any more. No more letters reminding me that a visit is due. My records will be preserved, and not wiped. He will write to my doctor to confirm the new arrangement.

And to recommend no change in my current hormone regime.

He was satisfied with my latest test results - see the post Hormone Balance on 15 August - and remarked that at this stage (after more than four years on hormones) I should be focussed on maintaining my female look, rather than creating it, or enhancing it. Indeed, too much oestradiol would risk such things as breast cancer, and possibly other health risks. A lowish dose was sufficient. At some point natal women came off their HRT, but I could not. It was not known what the consequences of taking feminising hormones lifelong were. He was glad that my doctor was so co-operative and monitoring me closely, with six-monthly or annual blood tests, depending on what was being tested for. So was I. It was a major reason to stick with that practice, and not move away from my village.

Really, the only physical problem I had was that I was a bit overweight. It was a stable condition - my weight now was exactly the same as twelve months ago - but it would do no harm to get myself in hand. And the two obvious solutions (reduction of sugar and fat intake; and more exercise) were simply waiting for the right motivation. Such as wanting to impress someone very special.

We parted on very cordial terms. I felt he had seen me through a difficult phase of my life. I was very grateful. I felt properly 'finished' now.

It struck me, as I left the building, that all day long I had moved through one social situation after another that would have had the 2008 self in a panic. Seated on a packed train all the way to London; the ladies' loo at Victoria; an Underground journey cheek by jowl with all kinds of people; a visit to a popular national gallery (The Tate Modern); a walk over the Thames on a crowded pedestrian footbridge; another Underground journey; a walk through John Lewis. Under scrutiny all the time. All done without thinking. The 2013 self could function rather well as an ordinary woman, a woman who did everything that other women do, and I felt myself wondering why I wasn't taking full advantage of the fact. I should be pushing the boat out.

On the train back home, there were three presentable men in my part of the carriage. Two were doing something on a laptop or tablet. One was engaged in emailing somebody on their phone. From time to time, they looked me over, and then continued with their work, obviously not seeing anything more than a harmless middle aged woman. I wondered what would happen if something occurred to make us all start talking. I rather looked forward to an incident that would halt the train - a lineside grass fire, perhaps - and create just such an opportunity to speak, and break the ice. But it didn't happen.

On the journey up to London, there had been a different kind of incident. A cheerful-looking woman with a baby in a pram boarded at Croydon. The very young baby soon began to cry. I couldn't help trying to see. I wasn't the only one. She had a bottle ready, and that did the trick. I wanted to say something to her, but she was just a little too far away. Oddly, my eyes filled with tears. I did not understand quite why, but they did. It must be an ongoing effect of the hormones.

I wonder what other emotional surprises are still in store. I may be signed off, but I think I'm only at the very start of whatever female adventure will come my way. Bring it on.

Yesterday, 31 August 2013, was a Big Anniversary. I originally intended writing about it on the day, but the chance to do it in the morning slipped by, and it was so nice a day that I went instead down to the beach at Ferring in the afternoon. That left the evening, but then I was disinclined to tamely go home. It was, after all, a Saturday evening, it was still warm and sunny, I had nothing very special to do at home, and I was in the mood for good company. The upshot was that I ended up sharing wine and a meal for four at a friend's home. By ten-thirty however, I was pooped and being walked back to where I'd parked Fiona. Once home, I did not feel up to posting.

But I do today. The Big Anniversary is that forty years ago I passed my Driving Test. Believe me, this was hardest thing I ever did in my life. It's a complex blend of physical and mental skills, especially as I learned to drive on a manual-transmission car with a gear level and clutch, and not one with automatic transmission. My physical co-ordination was of course dreadful, and my reading of the traffic was hopeless. But after three years of assiduous practice (more on that below) I managed to get a pass - just - on my second attempt at the Test.

The only thing that compares with it for sheer hard work and difficulty (and colossal pride of achievement) is perfecting my female voice. And both things have given me astonishing freedom and self-confidence. Even in dark times, when I couldn't do anything right, when I was being told to shut up, when I was being told that I was a bad, bad person, it was never in doubt that I was a good driver. I clung to that fact.

Oddly enough, I found learning to drive fiendishly difficult. This was completely unexpected. I thought it would be so simple. You see, I'd always sat next to Dad in the car, even as a young child, Mum and my little brother being relegated to the back seat. I'd studied how Dad handled the controls. I was used to how cars behaved when in motion. Speed did not make me nervous. Nor lashing rain, nor any hazards really, especially not wild thunderstorms and floods. Driving seemed so terribly exciting! I longed to be old enough to do it for real. When the car was parked at home, I often got behind the steering wheel and imagined setting off on a drive somewhere. Once in my teens, I wished my life away so that I could be at least seventeen. Bikes and scooters? A waste of time. It had to be a car, my own if possible, although how to afford one remained a hazy mystery until I started work and car ownership via a bank loan became feasible. But the essential first thing was to pass my Test.

As it happened, I didn't actually begin driving lessons until 1971, when nearly nineteen. The serious business of passing my A-Level exams took priority. Only when that was done did I move onto the next objective. I got a Provisional Driving licence in March 1971, and booked a couple of lessons with an instructor who had been recommended to me. But after twenty-six lessons, I wasn't doing very well. It wasn't the instructor's fault. I just couldn't get the hang of it. I kept forgetting about the clutch, or would let it in too quickly, so that the car hopped down the road, revving insanely. Pedestrians, cyclists and other traffic usually saw the danger, and leapt clear, peddled furiously into the safety of side-roads, or steered frantically to avoid a collision. Poor Mr Everdell, my instructor! It was a bad reflection on him. But I was the pupil from Hell. Nevertheless, he didn't stop me going in for my first attempt at the Test. It was a chastening, humiliating fiasco for me. So much so, that I gave up my dreams of driving for a few months afterwards, and could hardly talk about it.

But Mum and Dad wouldn't let me give up forever. I'm glad they didn't. Dad got me behind the driving seat again, this time in the family car (by then a Mark II Ford Cortina, registration RPB 22E), and we embarked on a regular weekly practice session for the next two years. The routine would be that I'd drive us both out in the car on Wednesday evenings, most often to a pub in the New Forest - such as the Sir John Barleycorn at Cadnam - but making use of one or other of the disused airfields on the way for all kinds of manoeuvres. Such as the one at Stoney Cross, which was in a much better condition for learner-driving practice than it is now. Gradually I became more skilful. I went out with Dad on other occasions too. I renewed my provisional Licence annually. In those days, you had to go to a council building in town, and your red Licence book would have a little form stuck inside on payment of the fee. Do you remember those? Here's my own old-style Driving Licence with three years of stickers inside. I still have it in my archives:

When I finally felt confident enough to have a second stab at the Test in August 1973, I'd accumulated many hours of driving behind me and was as good as any young person on the open road. In town was another matter - I remained poor at parking, especially reversing into an awkward space. And I still wasn't using my mirrors as much as I should.

But I did well enough on the day. The Examiner called attention to two things: I had not glanced in my mirror every time I should have, and I was resting my left hand on the gear level knob too much, but nevertheless he gave me a pass. Of course, I was on air. Here is the document, or rather, here is a black-and-white version of a forty-year-old photocopy:

There now followed what I can only describe as an orgy of driving. Dad gave me access to the family Cortina, and I must have clocked up a couple of thousand miles in that. I remember that he let me take off for a drive when we were on holiday in Cornwall, while everyone else was sunning themselves on the beach. How fair and reasonable was that? Of course, if I drove us all around in the evenings, it meant that he could have a decent drink for once. In 1974 Dad traded the Ford Cortina in for a pale yellow Renault 12, registration JYF 844K. It was oddly-shaped, but (for its time) well-equipped and superbly comfortable. In 1975, he got himself a huge Citroën D Special, and I bought the Renault off him. It therefore became thefirst car I owned. Here it is in August 1975, on a trip to Wallington in South London (the girlfriend is Jenny):

And here it is in 1976, at Charmouth (the girlfriend is Edwina):

I drove that car until 1981, covering 103,500 miles in it. It gave me faithful service, but it was eventually slain at a crossroads near Botley in Hampshire, when a silly boy in his first car (a Ford Capri) misjudged my speed, pulled out in front of me, stalled, and we collided. There were several witnesses. I gave a statement to the Police. We were all shaken, but nobody was much hurt. Poor JYF was a write-off, its front hopelessly crumpled. I sadly unscrewed the back plate, which I still have. You save something of your first car if you possibly can. Well, you do if cars are special to you.

In the past forty years I've owned only seven cars, Fiona included. I tend to keep my cars a long time if they suit me and work well. Altogether, I have covered nearly 518,000 miles in them. That won't be a record by any means, but it does rather show how fond I am of driving, when you consider that most of the time I never used a car for travelling to work.

Well, very probably the last for a long time. I do appreciate what London has to offer. As an exciting cultural experience it is second to none; there is an overwhelming amount to see; it magnificently affirms that Britain is important, unique, deep, alive and kicking, a powerhouse. Full of money new and old. Resonant with echoes of the past in every city lane and alleyway, in every monument, right back to Roman times. But also where a futuristic cityscape is being built before your very eyes, as glass and steel towers reach ever higher towards the sun, in ever weirder shapes. It's like no other place on earth that I've personally yet seen or heard of.

But it's also expensive to travel to, vast and sprawling, exhausting to walk around, humdrum away from the city centre, choked with people, and empties your purse like no other tourist trap. After just a few hours, I find I have had quite enough, even though I haven't really done a third of what I thought I might do. Then I want to escape.

I hadn't been to London for over a year. I've now had another bite at it. With my visits to Dr Curtis at an end, there is no reason to ever go there again, but there is still so much I'd like to see. So perhaps I'll go back sometime in the coming twelve months. But it'll be a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I know that I'll find it tiring and expensive. And that's why I'll go alone, so that I can, without ruining anyone else's day, scrap my plans and make for the next train out of the place the instant I've had my fill.

I've already mentioned that I went to see Dr Curtis in London last week. My appointment was at 3.00pm. I decided to get up there from Sussex by 11.30am, and, both before and after my appointment, spend time at a gallery or museum that I'd not been to before. Two places only. I knew I would not be able to manage more than that. I chose the Tate Modern, that world-famous gallery of modern art, and a little known museum of Egyptology, the secretly tucked-away Petrie Museum, at University College London.

This post is about the Tate Modern, the building. Tomorrow's post will cover the visitors and the exhibits.

The Tate Modern occupies a huge brick building that previously housed the Bankside Power Station, and it has been continuously developed on that site since the 1990s. Externally, it still looks very industrial, but that's perfectly in keeping with its purpose of presenting the best of modern art, and the cavernous interior of this austere brick and steel structure is cathedral-like in its soaring height and sense of space. It has a tall tower, and is a distinctive landmark when seen from the north bank of the Thames - in this instance from Queenhithe, near Southwark Bridge:

Across the river in front of it is the Milennium Bridge, for pedestrians only, which lets you shuttle between this Cathedral of Art and St Paul's, that Cathedral of God, almost directly opposite. The Tate Modern is of course well integrated into a continuous complex of South Bank cultural and tourist venues, such as the rebuilt Globe Theatre, with a riverside walkway linking them:

As you approach the Tate Modern, that central tower becomes dominant and awe-inspiring:

Halfway up on the river side is a café with an outside balcony, which gives you amazing views of St Paul's, as these pictures may suggest:

A lofty platform to see the city from! But even at this height, all of the tower has yet to thrust fingerlike into the blue sky, as a sideways glance upwards from the balcony confirms:

I wonder how many people have attempted to climb that tower?

Internally the old power station building was vast. Four floors of spacious galleries have been created on the river side, but that still leaves the landward side and the colossal central space to play with, presently the subject of an ongoing building programme:

It must have looked brutal when the disused power station was being considered as a possible site for the Tate Modern back in the early 1990s. The galleries show nothing of the steel skeleton from which they are suspended. But here and there some tidied-up steel has been left, as a reminder of the original purpose of the building:

I really like how the whole 'developed' part of the building has been made into a series of structural artworks, the gallery spaces and connecting escalators and stairways being in themselves reflections of the paintings and the three-dimensional objects on display. Equally so, the exposed piping:

The galleries vary in size. Some, such as projection rooms, are small and intimate. Others are long and narrow, others vast cubes or echoing rectangular boxes. Different spaces suit different works. For instance, this work, involving well-separated pure white fluorescent light clusters, could only be shown in a big room all to itself:

Other works, such as these sombre and brooding paintings by Mark Rothko, achieve their full intensity and power by being hung in a much smaller space:

Rothko painted these to hang in a New York restaurant, but realising that they were too dark in mood, and that they would unsettle and subdue the diners, he found another home for them. Only in a very large space, flooded with light, would they lose their oppressive effect.

Tomorrow I'll present pictures of the people I saw at the Tate Modern, and say something personal about the exhibits.

In this post, I feature some of the people I saw in the galleries, and the exhibits that had the most impact on me.

The Tate Modern galleries were thronged when I was there last week. This was a major tourist attraction. A smaller building would have seemed impossibly crowded. It certainly wasn't easy to get shots without people in them, so I made them part of the composition. In one room some kids asked me why I was standing in a corner. I explained that I was waiting for the right people to wander into my shot.

Modern art can be rather difficult, with abstractions and the artist's often very personal symbolism to contend with. So I was surprised how patient and seemingly interested the visitors were when faced with something that was impenetrable or inexplicably grotesque. How they assumed 'church' or 'museum' behaviour, and generally treated all the artworks with equal respect, even though they didn't have to. Here are some shots to illustrate what I mean. In this first one, a long queue had formed, simply to look through the eyepieces at the end of several long wooden boxes:

Was it 'what the butler saw'? I shouldn't think so. I didn't have the time to find out. Or this couple, getting intense about some paintings by Gerhard Richter:

Or these women, formed up before a darkly shimmering Mark Rothko painting, their postures for all the world suggesting entrancement and deep appreciation:

Or these people, silently watching patterns projected onto a wall in a dark room. Absorbed, unable to leave:

In a book I possess (presently out of print) the author (a photographer) says that galleries are the very best places for illicit couples to meet in secret. You can sit together in front of a picture or sculpture, and nobody will guess that you are connected in any way. The book also says that galleries are where such affaires end, the woman, forsworn, sitting alone until she breaks down and cries in her aching despair. It's rude to come between anyone seated and the artwork they are contemplating, so only her shaking back can betray her grief. Only the painting sees the tears.

The exhibits in the Tate Modern are not all abstract and obscure. There are some easily-absorbed (though not necessarily easily-understood) paintings. Such as this Dod Proctor from 1926:

Or this Meredith Frampton from 1928:

And even this claustrophobic Francis Bacon from 1961 - which shows his suicidal homosexual lover I believe - is not at all hard to digest:

But some knowledge of conditions in German-occupied Belgium during the Second World War is needed to unravel this eerie painting called Sleeping Venus from 1945 by Paul Delvaux. It was the best painting I saw:

Delvaux has gone to town with naked women in this picture. There are no less than six of them. Apart from the two in the foreground, there are four kneeling women in the background, all making wailing gestures of despair, just like the standing woman on the foreground right. On the left, a clothed woman with a strange red hat does her best to plead with the skeleton, Death - or the German occupiers, if you like - but you know that he will be possessing the reclining Venus soon enough, no matter how the negotiations go. She, the sleeping Venus, seems oblivious to her fate. The other women's anguish reflects their terror of the violation to come, and the knowledge that they may be next. The thought of a skeleton laying a bony hand on warm living flesh is peculiar, surreal; but for all that the reclining woman is made to look calm, serene, almost anticipatory.

She certainly has a womanly body, and I found it very easy to imagine myself in that picture. My self-view has developed that far! However imperfect one's body, there comes a point where it unmistakably resembles the classic female form, in my case the classic fleshy female form, and can be taken for nothing else. And you also realise that such a body has a natural purpose that you ought not to deny or resist. I am starting to feel that way. In this mood, a gallery full of voluptuous Restoration beauties with bare shoulders might fire me up! (Watch for signs in my posts)

There were several Picassos, of course, but I couldn't identify with the women in them, whether from 1925, 1937 or 1968:

I don't know why Picasso felt compelled to pull the physical features of women apart, and display them in such an ugly and distorted way. Why not reveal the inner life of a woman in a beautiful way? After all, he loved women all his life, and presumably valued them as more than a collection of sexual parts. He was also extremely proud of his virility; its loss in old age disturbed and depressed him.

The purely abstract works were more subtly unsettling. Like this off-balance Mondrian painting from 1935:

Or Cy Twombly's work from 2006-08. This was my favourite from a series of four very similar paintings:

It looks dashed off in a few paint-laden sweeps of the arm. It probably took a bit more planning than that. Not clever enough? No message? Maybe. But then I came across this, a photograph-based creation by Lorna Simpson from 1991 called Five Day Forecast:

The five days are named along the top: Monday to Friday. The same person shot each day, dressed in the same plain dress, though creased in subtly different ways. The same pose. Clearly the forecast is for five days of humdrum repetition. It may be significant that this is a black person. It may also be significant that we can't see her face. Is it a woman at all? There is no bust, and those arms look a bit muscular. Along the bottom are words that all begin with Mis-. Misdescription. Misinformation. Misidentify. Misdiagnose. Misfunction. Mistranscribe. Misremember. Misguage. Misconstrue. Mistranslate. Mis- or Miss? The accompanying note on the wall suggested that calling attention to gender differences was part of the artist's concern. I think I agree.

Then there is art which deals not with a general condition, but accuses and vilifies an individual. Such as Margaret Thatcher in her handling of the Falklands War of 1982, in this textile work by Tracey Emin from 2004:

I was very much exhilarated by a collection of Soviet Russian propaganda posters from the 1930s and 1940s:

The last, with this brave and determined Woman in Red exhorting us to fight, is a lithograph by Nina Vatolina from 1941, a fateful year, and the words say: Fascism - The Most Evil Enemy of Women. Everyone to the struggle Against Fascism! You can't argue with that.

Finally, I must show a very colourful work by Dan Flavin that was a firm favourite with children and adults alike. Me too!

I think you'll agree that I got a lot out of my visit to the Tate Modern!

Dr Curtis wrote a letter to the GP I prefer to see, basically confirming his ongoing role as a consultant 'only as required'.

This was sent via myself, so that I could read it, and take a copy if I wished (of course!). And today I dropped by at the village surgery, to leave his letter at reception for my doctor's attention when convenient to her. I didn't think I was justified in squeezing the time available for patients who were ill by making a special appointment simply to hand over Dr Curtis's letter and chat about it. So it wrote a covering letter of my own, and popped the lot in a sealed envelope.

I made a proposal in my covering letter, about a health care initiative that might improve how the eleven doctors in the large local practice deal with the needs of patients who come to them and say they are transsexual. I very much doubt whether they have more than a handful of such patients between them, and they can't be feeling their way forward with much assurance and consistency. It would be good, I thought, if these doctors, all of them, could have the chance of exchanging questions and answers directly with real-life trans patients whose cases histories they know, or will come to know.

Obviously it would have to be one patient at a time, in a small friendly forum, so that no cross-patient confidentiality issues would arise. Meaning that I mustn't air my medical case history in front of another trans patient, and vice versa, regardless of whatever we might afterwards say to each other over a drink at the pub! And quite apart from the confidentiality issue, it really would be asking too much to expect a group of trans people, who have never met each other before, to explain with one voice how it feels to be trans, and what their essential needs are! We are all very individual.

Anyway, this is what I added at the end of my covering letter:

I do not know how many transsexual patients the practice deals with, but they must still be thin on the ground in Mid-Sussex. That will not always be the case. The gradual easing of public prejudice and discrimination is making ‘coming out’ less of a hurdle for transsexual persons, and medical practices are bound to be approached for help more and more. There is an obvious advantage in General Practitioners being briefed on what to expect, and how to react, not only in the case of a patient making his or her first nervous (perhaps terrified) approach, but in the case of post-operative patients (like myself) who have settled down into their new life, and have health needs entirely similar to anyone in their particular gender and age group.

It would surely help if once in a while doctors had the opportunity of discussing clinical and other issues directly with such patients. I am thinking less of a lecture, and much more of a low-key discussion group, with the opportunity for both doctors and patient to put the questions they wish, and explore any points that are not clear.

Ideally there might be a well-populated and willing consultative panel of trans persons of all ages and both genders. But in real life perhaps not very many would be happy to take part. Those at an early stage of treatment might feel too emotionally battered to talk about their experiences and needs. Those who have successfully transitioned into their new life might wish to leave all unnecessary self-disclosure well behind them. However, I for one would like to assist. In no way do I want to push myself forward, but I’d be happy to volunteer for such discussions if they can increase local expertise in this clinical area.

It’s something positive that I can do, something I can give back for the care I have received, and look forward to receiving in the future. So do please bear this suggestion in mind, and perhaps ask your colleagues what they think.

I wonder what will come of this? I certainly would, if invited, give a proper 'talk' to the practice doctors, and the nurses and reception staff too, at some early-evening session.

There is the danger that if I were the only person to give them 'the trans patient's point of view', their 'education' would be skewed towards my own experience and situation. But even that would be better than a patient turning up at an appointment sometime in the future, wanting to plunge in - and burn their boats - with a Huge Disclosure About Themselves, desperately wanting immediate counsel, but being handled with bafflement or clumsiness. Or for the doctor to be unfamiliar with post-op routines such as dilation. Nobody can really 'get' what it's like to be trans unless they are trans themselves. But it's very important to assist people like doctors to respond with some basic understanding, and answers from the horse's mouth must help. I do hope there is a positive response.

Flinders Petrie was a renowned British Egyptologist who laid down the methodical principles and techniques of modern archaelological work in Egypt. He was active over a long period during the early years of the twentieth century. Before him, excavations were much less scientific in their approach, some of them little more than frank treasure-hunting.

The Petrie Museum, hidden away in the University College London complex, contains a huge number of Ancient Egyptian artefacts, all meticulously recorded and catalogued. It's a museum for the academic and specialist, and not for the tourist looking for breathtaking displays of mummies and sarcophagi, and vast stone heads of pharaohs. If you want that, then the place to go is the British Museum, not far away. Don't misunderstand me: I enjoy very much the extraordinary effect that the larger exhibits in the British Museum can have, and have done since my first visit when much younger. One is very conscious of the magical spells in the snakey hieroglyphs, the brooding intensity of the painted eyes on sarcophagi lids, and the presence of actual dead bony bodies in their funeral-wrappings. In dim light it would all be undeniably creepy, even in the setting of a modern museum.

During the Second World War, my Dad, who was in the Eighth Army, spent some time in Cairo and at one point went around the famous Egyptian Museum. This is what he said about it, in his autobiography:

We...spent several hours in the Egyptian Museum. The Museum was housed in a huge gloomy building crammed with the antiquities of the dead. Various sized stone sarcophagus (coffins) stood here and there with bandaged mummies housed in glassed containers. A wealth of gold, gems, ebony, ivory and alabaster vases were exhibited in other glass containers. Weird looking animals, coiled serpents, fierce cats and exotic scarabs were in abundance and the treasures found by Howard Carter in the tomb of Tutankhamun were housed in two vast galleries.

Everywhere homage was paid to the Deities, the Gods Horus, Osiris, Set, Imhotep and others. The names of Rameses, Cheops, Cleopatra and Nefertiti, Pharohs and Queens of Egypt appeared among others in the writings which also contained much about Memphis and Thebes, ancient cities, long gone, but from whose treasure houses much of the exhibits had been obtained. Here and there were large tablets covered with hieroglyphics (picture writing) and intricate wood carvings.

The atmosphere in the Museum was one of mustiness and haunting menace. While I was most interested in the marvellous sights I was very pleased when we got out into the sunshine again.

There you are: haunting menace. In contrast, the Petrie Museum is full of (mostly friendly) little ornaments and pots, and all the intimate everyday things, that enable archaeologists to understand the ordinary lives of the Ancient Egyptians of two to five thousand years ago. For instance, this charming pair of busts:

Clearly not the Pharaoh and his Queen! An official and his wife, I'm guessing. But there is some 'royal' stuff also. And plenty of pots and urns:

The Museum has some well-preserved items of clothing. This linen tunic for example, owned by a woman who lived around 2,800 BC:

The explanatory note next to it said this:

The Tarkhan dress
This dress...was excavated at Tarkhan. Tarkhan was one of the most important cemeteries from the time that Egypt was unified around 3,000 BC...Petrie excavated a pile of linen from a Dynasty I (c2,800 BC) tomb in 1913. It was only in 1977, when this linen pile was cleaned by the Victoria and Albert Museum Textile Conservation Workshop, that the dress was discovered. It was then carefully conserved, stitched onto Crepeline (a fine silk material used in textile conservation) and mounted so that it could be seen the way it was worn in life. It is one of the oldest garments from Egypt on display anywhere in the world. ...Rosalind Hall, who re-displayed the garment, comments that: 'The garment had clearly been worn in life, because it was found inside out, as it very well might have been after having been pulled over the head, with distinct signs of creasing at the elbows and under the armpits.'

Worn and then taken off over the head, just as you would do with a modern dress. It brings you so much closer to the real person.

There was another female garment on display, this time made of durable faience beads (faience was a kind of artificial coloured glass, and therefore weighty). It was fashioned into a wide-mesh net that revealed not only the shape of the wearer's body, but all their naughty bits, the breast cups covering only the nipples. The Ancient Egyptians had no hang-ups about nudity, their paintings clearly showing that children and servants went about naked, and even clothed adults wore thin, semi-transparent items. The hot climate was adequate reason for this. But clothing also had a connection with age and social status, so that only the royal household had the importance (and the ceremonial right) to wear really elaborate costumes. This particular dress seems very sexy in intention to our modern eyes, a fetish garment, but not necessarily so when it was actually worn:

The explanatory note had this to say:

The bead-net dress
This dress...was excavated by Guy Brunton at Qau in 1923-24 and dates to Dynasty 5 (c2,400 BC). In 1994 and 1995 two conservators, Alexandra Seth-Smith and Alison Lister, re-constructed the dress. The dress may have been worn for dancing. Each of the 127 shells around the fringe are plugged with a small stone so that it would have emitted a rattling sound when the wearer moved. When it was being conserved, it was thought to fit a girl of about 12 and to be worn naked. Guy Brunton commented that the dress reminds us of the story of King Sneferu going on a sailing trip on the palace lake, recorded on a papyrus dating from around 1,800 BC. The King gets 20 young women to row a boat and, to relieve his boredom, orders: 'Let there be brought to me 20 women with the shapeliest bodies, breasts and braids, who have not yet given birth. And let there be brought to me 20 nets. Give those nets to these women in place of their clothes!' The point of the story is that the behaviour of the King is outrageous rather than normal, but this tale has been used to make the bead-net dress into an erotic and exotic garment. When Janet Johnstone, and Ancient Egyptian clothing consultant, made a replica of this dress, she found that the bead-net dress was too heavy to be worn when placed directly on the naked body. Janet also discovered that due its 'netting' structure it could fit women of all shapes and ages. Is it therefore our imaginative reading of the dress that makes it erotic?

In other words, a heavy dress like this needed an undergarment to prevent the beads digging into the skin, and any shapely female person, not just a 12 year old girl, could feasibly wear it. The nipple-pieces still suggest however that it was meant to show as much of the woman's figure as possible, erotically so, and the 'worn for dancing' idea surely holds up. Interesting that netted garments can fit any shape: this must be why fat women can look good in fishnet stockings. Maybe I should experiment!

Once again, something that was worn by a real person bridges the gulf of time. I have to say that the things people wore are, for me, among the most interesting things in museums.

I do like Ancient Egyptian things. Maybe I should look to ways of cultivating the look of a wealthy lady of those times!

This is about the consequences of publishing blog posts containing unwarranted assumptions, and a confession of personal crassness in that area.

From time to time I go through the Comments pages on Blogger Dashboard, not only to view (and nearly always delete) the ones that Google thinks are spam, but to conduct a 'housekeeping' exercise on the many pages of more respectable comments. This is necessary, because occasionally I get comments on posts some time after the post is published, and I would not otherwise see them. When you are a prolific poster, it isn't feasible to scroll back on the main web page, on the off-chance of discovering comments on posts put out two or three weeks ago, or even further in the past. But I can do it from the Dashboard, when I have an odd moment. In that way, I get to read at least some of the comments that I've hitherto missed.

I came across three comments yesterday that were not made straight after the post, and I was therefore unaware of them. All were by 'Anonymous', but all three writers did identify themselves when signing-off their comment, so I do know who they are. Two of the comments made me feel great. The third made me feel that I'd been rather stupid, and I would especially like to discuss it.

The two feel-good ones first. Last year, at the height of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, I was in the Dorset town of Shaftesbury, and after the event wrote a post on 21 June 2012 titled Jolly happenings in Shaftesbury. I'd witnessed a street party earlier in the day, then in the evening I saw the Mayor making his way to the place where the town fire-beacon would be lit:

There was a great atmosphere and I enjoyed the entire occasion. So I was chuffed to discover that on 12 July 2012 the Mayor left this comment that I'd not seen before:

BTW... Our beacon time slot was 10:15, so in fact we were a little early! The idea was for a chain of beacons to spread out from HRH The Queens beacon that she had lit in London. Anyway, it matters not. Pleased you had a good time! :)
Simon Pritchard
The Mayor of Shaftesbury

Fancy that. Now who made a search, and called my post to his attention, I wonder? And what a thing to happen, a presumably busy man making a comment to me! I'm impressed.

The second feel-good comment now. I'd seen an immaculate De Lorean sports car outside Waitrose in Winchester, and waxed lyrical about it in my post Back...to the Future! on 2 June 2010. Who wouldn't:

But I'd hitherto not seen this comment, made over a year later on 25 September 2011, by the actual owner of the car:

Hello Lucy,
Thank you for taking some wonderful pictures of my car. I drive the car each week to the shops and it is very reliable, due to being serviced every 1000 miles and driven each week. I had to park in the disabled spaces as I tried to park in the underground car park and needed 3 members of staff and 2 hours to get back out again. I had permisison to park outside the store after that.
Take care
Ed H

I really appreciate it, that this man took the trouble to respond, so long after my post!

Now for the third comment, the one I feel very awkward about, and have learned a lesson from. On 8 June 2012 I wrote a post titled Marriage on my mind, which touched on various aspects of a successful married relationship, and how nice it clearly is when it works. My post wandered into the topic of arranged marriages, and marriages between members of a supposedly elite set, and at the time I had this charming picture in Country Life to inspire me:

I wrote this as part of my post, based on that picture and the magazine notes beneath it:

Before me is a copy of Country Life. In fact it's the edition published on 30 May, just over a week ago. On page 45 is a charming picture of a not-quite-young lady (she's got to be almost 30, I'd say, because of her top job) called Miss Elizabeth Hemstock. It looks as if she's wearing a richly-woven dark red shawl over a virgin white nightdress. The subscript says this:

Lizzie, elder daughter of Mr and Mrs David Hemstock of Charnwood, Leicestershire, is to be married to Captain Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, The Light Dragoons, the son of Mr and Mrs Robin Hanbury-Tenison of Cabilla Manor, Cornwall. They will be married at Cardynham Church, Cornwall, on June 2. Lizzie is the UK brand manager of Gu Puds.

Well, she has clearly fallen under this young man's spell, as you would expect from his name! Love his magic, or love his horse, or love his smart uniform, this sounds like a peer-to-peer County Wedding par excellence. Guard of Honour, crossed sabres, the lot. And not the humble bonding by an anvil at Gretna Green of eloping lovers, planless, penniless, but free.

Hmmm. They've surely misspelled Cardinham. Cabilla Manor by the way is a country residence across the valley from the village of Warleggan on the south edge of Bodmin Moor. (Warleggan? All terriblyPoldark)

I now think this seems flippant and over-personal. And I made some very silly assumptions about the circumstances of the couple's wedding. Captain Hanbury-Tenison wrote the following as a comment on 8 October 2012, to set the record straight, and to correct the false impression that my post had given. I feel absolutely obliged to reproduce it here, as a just rebuke:

Dear Lucy,

I must agree with the other ‘commenters’ that you’ve written a lovely post and I can only agree with all of your sentiments and observations of love, marriage and companionship. I feel duty bound, however, to correct you in your errors regarding Lizzie, my wife, and me. I thought I would give you a snapshot of the true story rather than assumption of a ‘peer to peer’ marriage. As you quite rightly pointed out in your piece I am a Captain in the British Army. Lizzie and I met six weeks before I deployed on my third and final tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2010. Our parents had never met before or even heard of each other. She is from the Midlands and I am from the South West. We quickly fell in love and wrote to each other every day for six months while I was in Afghanistan. The shawl that you mention in your post was a birthday present that I bought for her from a street seller in Kandahar market. As soon as I returned from war I knew that I wanted to marry her. I had met not only my soul mate but also my best friend. I waited a year before proposing because I didn’t want to rush her and I wanted to leave the Army before we married so that she wouldn’t have to go through the hell of another 6 months with me in Afghanistan.

I am a private person but I tell you this because I want you to know that we are madly in love and would most likely have greatly enjoyed spending an evening drinking wine with you if the opportunity had arisen. I feel that your allusion to the middle classes being less likely to have a marriage based on love is unfair and unfounded. In my 8 years in the military I lived with people from extremely underprivileged backgrounds and I saw a great many marriages fail. Often this was due to unwanted pregnancies, lust coming before love or complacency being mistaken for happiness. These problems span all classes and backgrounds. Arranged marriages can come in many forms and as Lizzie and I live in a small one bedroom flat I hardly think we are contenders for this unpleasant title.

I hope that you don’t find my comments rude but I was offended to be talked about when you don’t know me or my wife and yet you write as though you might.

Regards

Merlin

PS. Lizzie is 27 (26 at the time of your writing). The reason for her ‘top job’ is entirely due to her competence, drive and professionalism.

Well, I am ashamed. The man's sincerity and restraint at what must have seemed a most annoying piece of writing on my part is remarkable. I wrote this yesterday beneath his comment:

I've just seen your comment, Captain, and because I made those assumptions I offer my apologies for my consequent misrepresentation of your meeting and marriage. My very best wishes for the future.

Lucy

But that did not seem sufficient. Nothing less than a full disclosure of my error would do. Hence this post.

I do hope that Captain Hanbury-Tenison, who says he is a private person, is not further offended by my making this kind of fuss. I simply think that one should publicly own up to important errors, and not let them stay buried. I will, in the future, be much more careful about what I say.

As early as possible tomorrow morning, although it'll no doubt be after 9.30am by the time I've faffed round, I'm hitching the caravan up to Fiona and launching forth on another Odyssey.

The first problem will be just getting off my drive. The gas people have filled my road with fenced-off holes in order to put in a modern yellow plastic gas main (plus side-branches to individual houses). Squeezing past these will be no small feat. I've made my getaway as simple as I can by mounting a shameless charm offensive towards the three diamond geezers who are doing the work in my road (actually they are polite and pleasant thirty-something guys with designer stubble and nice eyes) - making sure that I remind them of my presence and concerns by having a few friendly words with them every day. I've tried to make their job easy by not making waves over access to my house and garage for necessary drilling, excavation, tests and checks; and, when I'm out, making sure that a neighbour has keys to give them if required. Once or twice I've offered cups of tea.

They've been able to ogle me as they wished. A variety of outfits: tatty leggings and an old top; a dressing gown and nothing else; posh jacket and slinky stuff to match. Hair made up, hair in a mess. Make-up on, make-up off. But charm and elegance and no-nonsense confidence throughout. I gave one of these lusty fellows an eyeful of tit when winding up the corner steadies on my caravan, so that it could be temporarily shifted away from the house, in case they needed to dig a hole. God knows what they have made of me. But in return they have been most obliging with scheduling their work so that everything essential is finished at my house in time for my departure. There is some making-good left to be done during the next few days, after I'm gone, but nothing that can now stop me getting away on time.

Ah, the open road beckons! But it's not an open-ended adventure, never knowing from day to day quite where I'll be. The entire three weeks has been booked well ahead, so that I know for certain what to expect, and will avoid the situation, sometimes experienced in the past when touring, where no pitches are available except on nightmare sites that no-one would ever wish to return to. And I don't do 'wild camping' in roadside lay-byes, whatever the apparent attraction. Not in a caravan. It can, I agree, be OK in a motorhome or campervan - it's one self-contained and secure unit; you are safely locked in; you can reach the driving seat without going outside; and if there's any sign of trouble, you can just drive off. But you can't 'just drive off' with a caravan.

For peace of mind, if nothing else, I would always want the security of a proper caravan site. Whether it's a farm site where I know the owners, or a Caravan Club site, there is backup and support if anything goes wrong. Such as a technical problem with the caravan, or some personal mishap. That's become very important since I began caravanning on my own in 2009, especially as feminisation has robbed me of strength and made me vulnerable. In any case, as I get older I'm getting more and more reluctant to take chances on anything.

But if the places I shall pitch are set in stone, the people I might meet are not.

One of the attractions of a caravan touring is that you are bound to encounter all kinds of people you've never met before, not just on site, but out and around. I do, unfailingly; and the thought of meeting someone new who might prove to be a lifelong friend is always a delicious possibility. Not a Holiday Romance, I am not looking for that, but the kind of close friendship that blossoms when you find that you have an awful lot in common, and the chemistry is good. It's one of the reasons (though not the only one of course) why I will always holiday on my own. I want to be a free agent. Just in case. And it doesn't matter that my successes in the last year or two have been meagre. There is always the chance!

Who agrees that getting away on holiday is never a simple, straighforward thing to do?

Thank goodness that with the caravan packing is easy in that (a) within reason I can take everything that I might conceivably need - I'm not restricted to whatever will fit into a couple of cases; and (b) there is no need to continually pack, unpack, and repack while travelling around, as you would if going from hotel to hotel. I can literally take all my favourite clothes and shoes. And the best items can hang in the wardrobe, and not get creased. That's a huge plus point, having nice things to wear while away that hare not been creased to death! Things people don't normally take with them when holidaying. I often look exactly like a decently-attired local, especially as I don't dress in sports or rambling gear.

But when loading up the caravan, you mustn't put things in too soon! Yesterday morning, for instance, when halfway through giving my legs their six-weekly shave, saved till the morning of departure, I ran out of shaving gel and realised that both spare gel canisters had already been neatly stowed away in the caravan. Outside, that is. Where the Gas Guys were. Where the cold rain was gently falling. Sigh. There was nothing to be done but wash off my half-shaved limbs, towel myself, don proper leggings and a top, and scurry out to retrieve a gel canister. Then resume. What a palaver!

I'm still using a man's wet razor and gel, by the way. By Gillette. Mach 3. It does a very good job, and I'm disinclined to spend cash unnecessarily on a 'correct-gender' substitute pink girly razor. When the male kit gets shabby or breaks, or Gillette withdraw the refills from shopping shelves, or all but occasional electrolysis ends, then I'll invest in the pretty female version. But not till then. Meanwhile I buy the male razor refills and gel without turning a hair. Anyone watching, the checkout person included, can assume that I have a man in the house. Women often do, after all.

The Gel Episode was not the only hiccup in achieving a smooth getaway. There were other things that I needed which had already gone out to the caravan. Bottom line: it's impossible to be fully loaded and ready to roll hours in advance, such as on the evening before. There's always something that can't be packed till the very last minute, such as one's toothbrush if nothing else.

Yesterday I spoke of the delicious hope one has of encountering a new friend. Well, as soon as I backed onto my pitch at Cirencester, the lady in the motorhome next to me came out and said hello. Like me, she was on her own. Divorced, and the same age.

She especially noticed my girl-on-her own arrival because of her own situation, but she had also recently discovered a club for single caravanners and motorcaravanners whose aim was to ensure that no unmarried, widowed or divorced person need holiday without like company on hand. And she wondered whether I was a member. This club, which was called The New Companions Camping Club, had core members who spent their time travelling from one site to another, in accordance with a schedule made available to all the other members, and acted as hosts for social meetups. If you fancied a meetup, you simply booked in at the scheduled place, and asked at reception where the host member could be found. And then make yourself known, and join in as you felt inclined. There would be 10am and 5pm gatherings at the host's motorcaravan to decide on the day's and evening's events respectively. It might be a walk, or a trip into some town, or lunch somewhere, or cards with wine in the evening.

It seemed a great way to meet a big bunch of new people, all of them single for some reason or another, all of them with an enthusiasm for caravanning in common and possibly more than that. You had only to abandon your anonymity, and be sociable. It wasn't a dating club, but there was no ban on people pairing off if they felt they wanted to. It really is by no means uncommon for people on their own, perhaps lonely and lacking in self-confidence but determined to hit the road and tour, to discover a soulmate at some point in their travels. The ordinary caravan magazines are full of letters from those who have found true love through caravanning.

This New Companions Club, which just happened to be present at Cirencester during my stay there, made it much more likely that Cupid would call and start firing little arrows. The lady who had greeted me on arrival, whose name was Christine, wasn't looking for love herself, and I certainly wasn't, not even holiday companionship, but I was curious enough to let her introduce me to the group gathering at 5pm to discuss that evening's entertainment, although pleading tiredness I did not stay.

Later on, I invited Christine into my caravan for an early-evening chat before I started cooking my meal. She was chatty and seemed to have good attitudes, and we got on well. She was originally from the North, and now lived in South Wales, near her daughter and baby grandchildren. She had never been to Sussex, not wanting to drive in the heavy traffic around London, and I don't blame her.

At one point, just talking about the South Coast, she asked me whether Brighton was really as full of gay and lesbian people as its reputation suggested. I said there were certainly a lot of gay and lesbian people there, but on the whole they were unnoticeable. She then mentioned that there were gay men and lesbian women in the New Companions Club. And they were very nice too. Then she said she knew a transsexual woman who was also a Club member. She was just as nice. I thought at this point that she had a suspicion about me, and that she was probing. But no: the conversation flowed smoothly on without a pregnant pause. I decided that she didn't think I was trans myself. I could have corrected her, but quite honestly I saw no reason to.

I did ask however (doing my own probing) what other Club members thought of this trans lady. She said that some (including herself) were very welcoming, and very understanding, but some others were a bit awkward - not exactly hostile, but unable to overcome the feeling that the lady was really a man. And she mentioned that the trans lady had plenty of masculine traits, such as a deep voice. I don't think she would have spoken quite like this if she'd thought me trans also. Besides, at her own suggestion, we exchanged our full names, addresses, and contact numbers, and she gave me an unmistakably sincere invitation to get in touch when next in her area. Something she might not have done so freely if she was certain I was trans, although I may be misjudging her. As a clincher, so to speak, she looked out for me this morning to say goodbye, as she was going home today. But all the time it might have just been further evidence that Northern people are friendlier than most.

Which now puts an onus on me to enlighten her before attempting any future meetup in South Wales. That'll take some thinking about.

You know, she singled out the trans lady's deep voice. More proof that voice matters! It's one of the key defining features of a female person. I do wonder why so few trans women, so very few, pay serious attention to this.

I haven't been able to send out any posts in the last few days because the 'Mobile Internet' is really a big city concept, and it doesn't work too well out in the countryside, not even in what you might regard as proper towns. It did not prevent me posting from Cirencester (a proper town) before, because I had a Caravan Club wi-fi connection and could use that. But this time their router was not working, and it silenced me. The last post some days back was sent not from the Cotswolds but from a street near the centre of Newport in South Wales. Newport has beefed-up mobile phone coverage. Smaller towns do not. It's often possible to get a goodish mobile phone signal in them, which may be excellent for calls and texts, but not necessarily for the Internet. In such places, it can sometimes take up to half an hour to get a post out. In country meadows, it's impossible. So much for 3G. 4G? Ha.

I'm now in North Devon - arrived early in the afternoon - and it may be that the only place with mobile phone coverage robust enough for posting purposes will be Barnstaple, the largest town around. So of an evening, I might have to fire up Fiona, drive in, and hang around somewhere in the town centre, possibly in the rain, just to send out my latest literary effort. Obviously I will be securely locked inside Fiona. I'm not standing around out in the open, or lingering on a riverside seat, or waiting for an Internet connection under a lamp on a street corner, in case my purpose is misconstrued and I attract unwanted attention!

It was gloriously sunny and warm this afternoon. Having chatted with Ann and Phil who own the farm I'm pitched on - I've been coming here since 2009, and it's the sixth time I've stayed with them, so we are of course on first-name terms - I drove into Bideford, picked up the brochure for the annual Appledore Book Festival for Ann, and had a good wander around this attractive river town. I bought a green top for £2.95 from a charity shop, got diesel and food from Morrisons, and looked in at The Plough Arts Centre in Great Torrington. There's a film on there tomorrow evening at 8.00pm that I may go to see. Yes, it's a definite plan: out for the day, whatever the weather, then cut back for a quick meal at the caravan - or perhaps fish and chips from somewhere? - then see this film at the Arts Centre. Phil mentioned that they don't mind if you take your gin and tonic in while you watch. How civilised.

It struck me, as it has often struck me before, that life in North Devon, if I ever moved here, would not be dull. Pleasant towns, interesting shops, wonderful beaches, scenery to die for, galleries to visit, performances of all kinds to attend, good dining...my kind of life. And although house prices are creeping up, they are not at Sussex levels, nor will ever be. Well, if my Brighton friends disperse, and my village neighbours move away, then I'll sell up too and move here.

Sunny it may have been today, but the sunset was the kind that warned of a storm to come. When I last heard the forecast, it said that tomorrow is supposed to be a shocker for wind and rain. Phil and Ann were not so sure about that, but I wouldn't be surprised, having seen that sunset, to be woken in the night by a howling wind, and fierce rain drumming on the roof of the caravan. If the wind is strong enough, the caravan will shudder. I won't mind. It will all be exciting. The caravan weighs over a ton, so it's not going to get blown over!

I am one of those people who relish gales, and especially thunderstorms. I have always found a loud clap of thunder thrilling, and a bright flashes of lightning something to look out for with delicious anticipation. The louder and brighter the better, even though that means the heart of the storm must be dangerously close. As a child I would have my bedroom window open, to lean out and watch. I was fearless. And in my early twenties, I'd drive out to the New Forest chasing a thunderstorm, although that was possibly quite a rash thing to do, the large number of lightning-blasted oak trees in the Forest proving that in a storm you should definitely not be there! Nothing has changed. I still like a grandstand seat if Nature is putting on a display.

Not all people enjoy thunder and lightning, of course. Some are afraid of it, and I'm not going to scoff at them, because, after all, a massive electrical discharge can destroy whatever it touches, and occasionally people do get killed by being struck by lightning, or from being too close to a tall object that is struck. However, I saw on a TV science programme that if you are inside a metal box or cage, the immense current simply flows around you, leaving you unaffected. A car is such a box, and I should think a caravan (if metal-skinned, as mine is) is surely another. So I ought to be safe in the most intense of storms.

Just now it's very calm and quiet outside. No clouds, a half-moon. It's quite chilly. Clearly, 'the calm before the storm'. Hmmm...just at the moment, I've actually got an exceptionally good mobile phone signal: let's get this published without further ado.

Well, the night-time storm didn't materialise, but the following day was wet and windy from breakfast time to early evening, and I didn't stir from my caravan. It became my snug weatherproof capsule for photo work, cooking lunch and dinner, and a lot of snoozing. But I didn't abandon my plan to see that film at 8.00pm at The Plough Arts Centre in nearby Great Torrington.

I should mention that 'seeing a film' in a public performance was going to be rather a novelty for me. I'm pretty certain that the last film I saw at a cinema in a town was in 1996 or thereabouts, at the then newly-opened Crawley Megaplex. It was Star Wars 1 - The Phantom Menace. I wasn't impressed with that film, which I considered juvenile, nor the experience of seeing it in a futuristic cinema. I wasn't impressed with the eye-watering cost, either. I did not go again. I continued to watch occasional films at home on TV, on VHS tapes, or latterly on DVDs, but the Megaplex had put me off going out to a public performance. I really did not feel I was missing anything important by staying away from town cinemas, whether traditional or super-modern. I relented somewhat in 2009, watching the James Bond film Quantum of Solace with Dad on the cruise ship. That was fine, as an experience, but it didn't turn me into a keen cinema-goer. So this film at the Arts Centre was going to be something of an experiment.

I wasn't disappointed. The film was Much Ado About Nothing, made in 2012 and on general release in 2013. A romantic film. I saw it was highly rated, and I had to agree that the casting was excellent, the setting (a rich man's country villa with extensive grounds) right for the plot, and the contemporary 2012 dress (and gadgets) skilfully used to bring the action and atmosphere right up-to-date. So you had handsome men in sharp suits arriving in cars, using phones, with handguns instead of rapiers. Pretty ladies in fashionable dresses and hairstyles. Maids and security men dressed as you would conjecture they would be in a top luxury hotel. If you can imagine a Mafia aristocrat welcoming other Mafia aristocrats and their friends for a weekend party, you will get the general idea. With the host aristocrat having in his care a daughter called Hero and her slightly older cousin Beatrice. And visitors Claudio and slightly older Benedick falling for these ladies and marrying them in the end - for this is a Shakespearean comedy, meaning that whatever the turmoil introduced, the ending must be happy.

Turmoil there certainly is. Another visitor tries to wreck the Hero/Claudio hitch-up by concocting false evidence to slander her with. And I have to say it is disturbing to see how easily Claudio, and indeed all the men, are persuaded that young and sweet-natured Hero is a disloyal nymphomaniac. Perhaps in Elizabethan times a woman was very vulnerable to any slur on her virtue, and any lie whatever might be believed. Shakespeare similarly makes the smooth villain Iago sling mud at Desdemona in Othello, and the Moor is just as ready to accept Iago's clever lies as fact, with tragic results. A favourite theme, then. I'd like to think that nowadays the average man would keep an open mind, ask searching questions, and require irrefutable proofs before reacting to someone's poisonous assertions about his girl. But I'm probably naïve.

The film was made in black and white, although I wasn't quite sure why, because it would have worked in colour just as well. Black and white is very suitable for dramatic lighting effects, Caravaggio-style, but this film wasn't overburdened with them. The original Shakespearean words and phrases were used, just as he wrote them, and not a transcript in modern idiom. It should have sounded odd, with all the characters in 2012 garb, but strangely it worked. Even the names and noble titles of the men were preserved, although their subtle degrees of nobility could not be conveyed through modern dress (all were in well-cut light or dark suits) and I tended to mix up who was who. I could tell only by their behaviour.

So: two pairs of lovers who encounter misunderstandings, disapproval and other obstacles before wedding bells ring. I thought 'how very Jane Austen'. Or rather, Jane Austen must surely have had Much Ado About Nothing constantly in mind when she was putting pen to paper!

And the fallout? I think that henceforth I will stop refusing invitations from my Brighton friends to see a film with them. The films they may suggest won't all be great, but they should be much better than Star Wars I - The Phantom Menace, and I ought to give them a chance.

Today I had a phone call informing me of wonderful news. I am bound by a promise not to reveal details yet on my blog, nor to say why there is such a temporary embargo, and so I'd better not even mention who the caller was, nor what the news means to me personally. I will simply say that having had an early lunch at The Gallery Café at the Queens Theatre in Barnstaple, and having begun a leisurely look around the shops, on hearing the news I immediately sped back to the Café for a celebratory glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I explained the reason for this to the girl behind the bar, a mother of four, because I was bursting to tell someone even if it had to be a total stranger. But I must wait for The Word before declaring my news to the wider world. Sorry.

So, tonight I'm going to talk about gas.

There was once a time when the phrase 'it's a gas' was current. It meant 'what's going on now is mindblowingly cool'. It was actually a neat thing to say. But it was an odd and obscure use of the word 'gas' and it always sounded contrived, or at least an 'in' phrase used and understood only by a select few. One associated it with a spaced-out drug-taking subculture, and the louche life of rock bands. It occurs in the Rolling Stones' hit number Jumping Jack Flash, where Mick Jagger (vocals) howls out this tender refrain:

But it's all right now,
In fact it's a gas.
But it's all right,
I'm Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas.

I can't however remember anyone using the phrase 'it's a gas' after the late 1970s. It's ripe for revival, you know. It would be an economical sound bite for politicians, for instance - a phrase that sounds trendy and positive and approving, and would appeal in equal measure to the Young Voter Of Today, and to the Voter Who Was Young In The 1970s. But it conveniently means almost nothing. The perfect utterance for a hard-pressed Prime Minister. Or indeed a hard-pressed Deputy Prime Minister.

Enough of these vapidities.

As you know, I like to cook in my caravan. I scorn using a microwave oven, and cook with a gas hob and gas oven, just as I do at home. But yesterday evening, just as I was about to start cooking, and was pre-heating the oven, the gas ran out. Oh no! This was a dire problem. Not because I didn't have a spare propane gas cylinder - I always carry two cylinders, and can switch between them. Nor because I might not deal with the emergency in time to see that film a bit later on. No, it was a dire problem because to switch cylinders I'd have to brave the driving rain, and struggle with a spanner.

Thankfully there was immediate divine intervention, and the rain stopped. That left only the spanner to cope with. It had to be used in a confined space, at an awkward angle, and with a degree of strength that I had just about possessed when I last changed gas cylinders, but might not possess now. It was ages since I last carried out this very awkward chore. Supposing I couldn't undo the nut on the hose connector? Even if I cleverly remembered that the thread was the reverse of normal? I could of course ask Phil the farmer to do it for me, but that would be to admit a sad degree of girly feebleness. Fortunately, the nut moved, and I could detach the gas hose and fix it onto my spare cylinder instead. My Intrepid Girl Caravanner Credentials were still intact. I cooked and ate and arrived at the Arts Centre ten minutes before the film commenced - in time for that gin and tonic. And they did let me take it in.

I've turned up the date on which I last run out of gas: it was on 5 May 2010. That was the last night of my 2010 Scottish Tour with M---. A very different pre-op world. Since then I have spent 118 nights away in the caravan, on my own, cooking just for myself. I haven't cooked on every one of those 118 nights. I've had quite a number of meals out in pubs and restaurants. Against that, I've occasionally cooked up something for lunch, as well as in the evening. Let's say that on 100 occasions I've used some gas for preparing food to eat in the caravan. That then is what I can expect from a 6kg gas cylinder: 100 meals. The cylinder I've just exhausted cost me £16 in 2008, so each meal cooked from May 2010 has consumed, on average, 16p worth of propane gas. The cylinder I've now switched to cost me £22 in 2010, and each of the next 100-odd meals will use up 22p in gas. (I knew you secretly wanted to know all these fascinating dates and figures)

At any rate, I can now feel assured that it will be 2015 or 2016 before I need to use that spanner again. A weight off my mind. The last thing you want, on a cold evening late in the year, with rain whipping against the caravan windows, is an exhausted gas cylinder and a test of strength and endurance in the dark!

I can now reveal that I am officially Great Aunt Lucy! My nephew M---'s girlfriend C--- has given birth to a baby girl. She's called Matilda, and was born at 1.16am on 16 September. Although in theory full-term, she was a little underweight at five and three-quarter pounds, but today the hospital judged that it was OK for her to be taken home. So M--- and C--- now have transformed lives, a new and immensely important responsibility, and all the joys and tears that a child will bring.

I myself get a new status: and it's up to me whether I turn it into a meaningful role. I mean to try, although I must not of course trespass in the slightest on the far more important roles of parent and grandparent! I don't think that Great Aunts are actually expected to do very much. But whatever they might do, I'm up for it, although it's unlikely to include babysitting because M--- and C--- live about two hours away (it's not so much the distance, but the slow London traffic). Do Great Aunts get to hold and feed the baby? I hope so.

Funny how my nephew's 'OK Lucy! Go ahead and blog as much as you like about this uniquely amazing birth' message should closely follow an enquiry I made earlier today at Wroes department store in Bude, about another girl who had also been expecting a baby - although the baby would now be of nursery school age. It was two years ago. I was being served by a pleasant girl on the staff of Wroes called Gemma. I was looking for a fitted sheet for my bed at home, and she went that extra mile in rooting around behind the scenes to find exactly what I wanted. Gemma was however unmistakably pregnant. I asked when, of course. The birth was about three weeks away. So this was almost her last week at Wroes before taking maternity leave. She lived in Marhamchurch, a nearby village, but had originally come from the Midlands with her husband. Altogether we had quite a conversation. I never forgot her, and now, two years on almost to the day, I asked whether she was back at the store. Yes she was - how nice of me to enquire! She worked Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays. Today was a Wednesday, so I'd missed her. How very disappointing! I'll have to remember her working days, and come again to say hello, and of course ask after her child. But it could not be on this holiday: what a pity.

Funny also - to continue the baby theme - that on 16 September I was in Ilfracombe and saw yet another heavily pregnant girl, down by the harbour. She was completely naked, but that's for another post.

MEP Godfrey Bloom's remark a couple of days ago, to some women party members at a UKIP meeting, who admitted openly that they didn't clean behind their fridges - 'This place is full of sluts!' - was clearly meant as a jocular remark, but as might be expected, one likely to misfire. And indeed it has. I don't wonder that party leader Nigel Farage has clutched his brow in exasperation. No political party, especially one apparently making real headway in the run-up to the 2015 General Election, and especially one in the middle of an Annual Conference that must send out serious messages to the electorate, can pass off gaffes like this with an indulgent chuckle. I won't ever be voting for UKIP, but I do not wish to see them ridiculed.

Mr Bloom is the man who, not long ago, condemned foreign aid going to people in 'Bongo Bongo Land'. That phrase calls up immediate images of supercilious white English bwanas in pith helmets keeping down superstitious drum-thumping natives in Darkest Africa, and all the worst features of Colonial Life a hundred years ago. Africa may still be a continent full of poverty and wars, but it isn't Dark any more. Its problems, rural and urban, are largely a legacy from misguided and unjust colonial rule and exploitation, and they are curable. I personally think that every European country who selfishly grabbed a piece of Africa before World War II has an ongoing moral responsibility to make amends. And foreign aid is one way. If you must justify it further, then getting countries properly onto their feet with educational, medical, agricultural, manufacturing, housing and infrastructural programmes will stabilise them, and one day will turn them into significant political allies and trading partners. Either way, people opposed to foreign aid are spoiling the life chances of millions of people, and possibly condemning them to needless early death from war, disease or any of the many bad effects of grinding poverty and a life with no hope in sight.

Back to sluts. Can anyone call a woman a slut nowadays, meaning it to be taken as a joke?

At one time the word implied a low-class creature with no standards, who was badly dressed, dirty, unkempt, and almost certainly poor and ignorant. In other words, a victim of social indifference and prejudice, at a time when The Poor were a subclass, and judged by their 'betters' as guilty for their squalid way of life, its female members even more so than the men. It was no surprise if a desperate woman, forced to live a sluttish life, turned to prostitution. Thus dirt and sex were entangled, and a slut meant first and foremost a poor-class sleazy streetwalker who sold her body cheaply, simply for the means to stay alive.

It was of course a gross insult to call a respectable woman a slut. Her male family, or her husband, might well call out the perpetrator for satisfaction of the slur, whether the remark was justified or not. So in 1820 Mr Bloom would have faced pistols at dawn for his ill-judged remark. In 1920 he might still have been roughed up, and left with a black eye or two.

During the second half of the twentieth century a more metaphorical, more playful, usage of the word crept in, as the dire financial need to turn to prostitution receded. By 1970 the word could simply mean a good-time girl who didn't care who she slept with, nor how often. A cross but concerned mother on TV's Coronation Street could therefore accuse her misbehaving daughter of being a slut. On the box it had explosive but legitimate dramatic effect. But in real life it remained one of the worst things you could say to a woman.

Like many such words, 'slut' has lost some of its power in the last forty years. But it's still a word linked with easy, careless sex. You can however say it as a harmless throwaway remark to a friend who admits to sleeping with someone, or seriously thought of doing so, provided both of you are women of the world and know each other very well. You can get away with it if the word is said gently, with a shared smile and the right intonation, and is apropos of a confidence. It's still not a word I would personally ever write in a text or email, let alone in a handwritten letter, not to anyone, unless it were literally true and I really meant it to sting. Even then, caution would probably stop me. If a man ever called me a slut I'd take him to mean I was sexually wayward and probably none too particular about my feminine hygiene. I'd feel cheapened and disrespected. It most definitely wouldn't be the right word to chose, if he simply wanted to jest about my fridge-cleaning routine.

Is this being too sensitive? Well, we have all become a lot more aware of our individual value and self-worth. There is no need for anyone to accept a put-down, however jocular. Mr Bloom's 'slut' remark wasn't addressed to me, but I'm imagining how I would have felt if I had been there. And in a way Mr Bloom was attacking all women, myself included, who are not obsessive about the dust and fluff that gradually accumulates behind their kitchen appliances. He shouldn't be dismissing us with an inappropriate label.

I'm not going to retaliate and call him names here. I think his gaffe indicates the attitudes that buzz around inside his head. I'm saying no more. Of course he forfeits my support. If he believes that it's OK to belittle and insult women, he can't expect women to vote for him if they happen to be one of his East of England constituents, nor praise him if not. That is our sanction against him. I'm assuming that, as a politician, he will see this is as a perfectly principled position. It doesn't seek to destroy him, but merely registers proper protest, and attempts to educate him for the better.

My longish touring holiday is now drawing to a close. In five days' time I will be back home, and it'll be business as usual, the old routine. But also more blog postings! Quite a lot of my holiday needs photographs to illustrate what I did and what I saw, and the pictures can only be published from my PC.

This morning, for once, it's a beautiful pink and blue sunny dawn. September has not proved to be a good month for holidays in the West of England, and most mornings I've been greeted by leaden skies and spitting rain, or damp fog, even if it's bucked up later on. This unpromising weather hasn't (as the pictures will show) stopped me getting out and around, and generally having a very good time. Take yesterday for instance: up early; a dash in Fiona in thick fog to catch the 9.03am train from Axminster to Exeter St David's (I'm now pitched at Lyme Regis, by the way); a change to a local train to Paignton; and then all the views from a line that for the most part kept to the sea shore, tunneling through red cliffs time and time again, and staying so close to the water that in stormy weather all trains must be comprehensively sprayed by breaking waves. How exciting it must be to travel in such weather! It wasn't like that yesterday, even though the tide seemed high enough to cover the track. The fog dispersed, and Paignton was all palm trees and sunshine and soft mild air. You can plainly see why they call Torbay the English Riviera.

Having lunched leisurely at a harbourside pub - a full-blown roast meal - I decided to walk it off with a promenade-and-beach stroll all the way from Paignton harbour to Torquay station, which isn't that far really, but I misjudged how long it would take, dawdled, then had to cover the last mile at a cracking pace to catch the train back to Exeter. It's left me with sore feet this morning.

Not to worry. Only two objectives today. The first is my mid-weekly dilation. While on holiday I cut out the weekend session, which is in fact completely optional nowadays, and simply dilate when convenient somewhere in the middle of the week. I actually like dilation, because it's a good opportunity to visually inspect The Parts with a mirror, and a great excuse to lie back for half an hour, and totally relax.

Mind you, you need proper facilities. A caravan has them: electrically-heated warmth, a comfortable bed, a bathroom, hot water to wash with, fluffy clouds to watch through the skylight, blinds to pull down, curtains to draw, and total uninterrupted privacy. It would be horribly difficult to dilate in the average backpacker's tent. And although a hotel or guest house bedroom might have space and an ensuite bathroom, it doesn't have that absolute guarantee of privacy. Someone might knock on the door. Someone might blunder in to find you naked on the bed using a kind of dildo. There is no way you would be able to clear away the paraphernalia of dilation in a second or two. It would be a sticky moment and no mistake!

But in one's own caravan, you can lock the world out. You are quite alone and can enforce that. For me the need to dilate, the need to have privacy for it, and all the space in the caravan devoted to it, is the chief reason why I can't ever take somebody else along with me.

The other objective is to investigate a very discreet little signpost less than a mile down the road. I don't remember seeing it before. It says: River Cottage HQ. Aha! An outpost of eco-minded TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall's empire! I think I'll turn down the driveway and if confronted by people with 'you can't come in here' expressions, I'll simply offer apologies for my intrusion, and claim that Fiona overrode my wishes and brought me there against my will. But if I'm lucky, the Great Man himself will be there, and this conversation will take place:

Hugh: I know you! You're that off-the-wall traveller and food lover Lucy Melford, aren't you? Welcome to River Cottage HQ!
Lucy: And you're that renowned but equally off-the-wall chef and bon viveur Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall! How nice to meet you!
Hugh: You'll stay for lunch, won't you? We've just caught some crab, and there are two lobsters that must be eaten, and I have a dandelion and dock leaf salad ready to eat. Of course you'll stay! Only the six of us, but we've plenty of wine, too much really, and we need help to get through it all!
Lucy: With pleasure!

It all seems so terribly likely to happen. I'd better give today's garb a lot of careful consideration. A loster-coloured long top, certainly, in case of accidents while eating. Well, I can ponder my outfit while dilating! (People who don't dilate miss out on all these golden opportunities for serious thought).

And if Hugh isn't there, and there is no lunchtime invitation, then I have some sea bass in the caravan freezer for an evening meal instead. Sorted, either way!

I'd driven over to Kent to have some electrolysis, and instead of travelling back as I usually did, via Tunbridge Wells, I decided to come off the A21 just north of Sevenoaks, and take the A25 westwards until it met the A22, when I would turn south towards home. I reckoned this would at least avoid the tiresome traffic that builds up at Tunbridge Wells in late afternoon. But it would also be a novelty. I hadn't driven along the A25 for a very long time. I recalled that it went through some attractive countryside, and was the epitome of leafy Surrey. The towns I'd encounter - Sundridge, Brasted, Westerham, Limpsfield, Oxted - were all small and I should be able to bowl along with few stops, not especially fast, but without maddening holdups. To keep moving does give an illusion of progress!

There was a time, long ago, when this section of the A25 was part of my daily commute by car from home to Bromley and back again. I was then the Investigation Manager at Bromley 1 tax office, a position I held from September 1985 to September 1990, before getting a less welcome transfer to Southwark in the heart of London. It was a busy period for me, as my job tended to expand with add-ons now and then, such as being appointed Liaison Officer for South East London between the investigation teams in the Revenue and their equivalents in Customs & Excise, two government departments with very different cultures. But it was for the most part a happy time at work.

At first I commuted to Bromley by train from Merton Park (near Wimbledon) in southwest London. But after moving house to Horsham (my first foothold in Sussex!) in the autumn of 1989, I decided to drive. It was a long cross-country drive too, but I enjoyed it very much, summer and winter.

It was by then not so good at home. I'd got married to W--- in 1983, taking on her daughter A---, then aged twelve, at the same time. I'd done six years of parenting, conscientiously but always with a light hand, and A--- and I had a great relationship. As for W---, I had wanted to marry her; I had rescued her from an unexciting housing association flat; and I'd given her a second chance at making a success of marriage. We had four good years trying. Then, little by little, it went sour. I saw even then that A--- was the glue that kept us united and focussed on holding everything together.

After A--- took her A-Level exams in the summer of 1989, she got on the plane to new Zealand to spend a year with her father. From then on, W--- and I began to flag. She had her job, I had mine. We didn't socialise much, except with family. We began to get ratty with each other, not because we disliked each other, but because the glue had gone, we'd lost our way, and the differences in temperament were loosening the bond.

It's a very sad thing, to realise that something is wrong and yet see also that it's not realistically worth the effort of repairing. One shouldn't be happier at work than at home, but that's how it became for me. And my long drive home often gave me opportunities of stretching the journey out, to savour the gap between the demands at the office and the demands that might face me at home.

In John Braine's 1962 novel, Life at the Top, the hero Joe Lampton, the company accountant, the Northern-lad-made-good, who married the boss's daughter after getting her pregnant, has become a smooth, respectable and compliant lapdog - a role he chafes at. The book opens with Joe and his wife Susan habitually starting to bicker after nine years of marriage. Neither wants that, but dissatisfaction is setting in. Just like myself and W---. Not just dissatisfaction; there is a realisation that one has failed; and that one must lie in the bed one has made for oneself, at least while it can be borne.

Joe's life is at a crisis. In a hundred small ways, he has lost his grip, lost the feeling of being essential and important. He has achieved enviable material success and comfort, but through a cheating shortcut and not by hard graft, his accountancy skills not mattering. He hasn't worked his way up from the bottom, he has slid in smoothly at the top. The steelworks boss, his father-in-law, a hard, sneering, devious old-school industrialist, despises him; so does his son; his wife has almost had enough of him; and only his little daughter still worships him. He knows that he puts up with his life only because of his daughter.

It was so easy for me, at the time, in 1990, to identify with most of this.

In Chapter 2 of the book, Joe is driving home, ruminating over two things imposed on him by his father-in-law that afternoon - a business trip to London, and his nomination (and certain election, because his chairman father-in-law will see to it) to the local council as a Conservative Party member:

The fact was, I realized, I didn't want to go home. It wasn't only that Susan would be angry about both my trip to London and my going on the Council; it was something much worse. For ten years now this drive home had been an escape; every inch nearer to Warley had been a farther distance between me and my father-in-law and my father-in-law's world...now he was going to be a fellow-councillor. Or rather he was going to continue being my boss...There wasn't going to be any escape...there was nothing to be done about it once the Selection Committee had made their decision; as Harry Runcett had once said in his cups, the Park Ward was so safe a seat for the Tories that they'd elect a f---g cat if the party chose to run one...Now, driving along Hawthorne Main Street in the rain I knew what the cat was. And it wasn't a tom. It was a neuter, a big fat neuter, that always did just whatever its father-in-law told it to do.

I put my foot down and the Zephyr gathered speed up the slope. The sooner I was home, the sooner it was over with...Then I was over the crest of the hill and I could see Warley; despite myself I began to feel more cheerful. ...I slowed down and opened the window to let in the rain and the smell of the forest...for a moment I was tempted to stop the car and for the duration of a cigarette sit quietly with the quietness.

I changed down into second; then changed up again; what I wanted to do was innocent and harmless and utterly impossible. I could hear the voices now... he's drunk, of course, they said. Why else, my dear? Why should he stop so near home? Trying to sober up, frightened to go home.

I wasn't drunk, and I had no overbearing father-in-law, nor was I going to be the subject of malicious gossip, but I did sometimes crave the chance to pull in, and let life flow by, rather than go home and (it always seemed) face the music night after night after night after night - until I had had enough. I exaggerate a bit of course: but like poor Joe Lampton, there came a point when I really did not want to go home.

As you drive through Limpsfield on the A25, and then under the tall railway bridge, and then up on East Hill into Oxted, there are some flats on the left. They were there in 1990. They would catch my eye. I began to imagine how it would be if things got too bad at home. Could I buy one of these flats? I thought only of buying, but it seemed perfectly feasible to do that, rather than rent - we had downsized to get out of London, and the Horsham mortgage was quite small. Surely I could at a pinch continue to cover most of the costs of our little house in Horsham, as a home for W---, while buying one of these Oxted flats for just myself?

I dismissed the thought every day that I passed by. But I could not get it out of my mind. It was at least a plan, an escape route if I couldn't take any more. I imagined a bust-up, a hastily-arranged short tenancy somewhere, and then moving in, my money now all gone, with only my car and basic personal possessions. No furniture, just packing cases to sit on, or scattered cushions on the floor, and a camp bed in a corner. Central heating, but a bare kitchen. But I'd be free. And I'd have peace.

It was a comforting notion, something to cherish, to cling to, and it sustained me up to the end of 1990. Then something else happened, and the notion never had to be turned into reality. W--- and I finally found that moment to discuss our marriage seriously. We separated in February 1991, W--- going back to London (what she really wanted) and leaving me in possession of the Horsham house, although not of course free to sell it. In fact, W--- forced me to wait five years before I could commence divorce proceedings and finally sell up at Horsham. By then, my preferred place of residence was near Brighton, rather than close to London, and so I never did end up living in one of those Oxted flats, sitting on a packing case, cup of tea in hand, soup heating in the bare kitchen, completely strapped for cash but in control of my life. And beyond hurt and vexation.

I think my present reluctance to form a bond with anyone, to share my home with them, has its origin not in my shattered relationship with M---, but that earlier failure with W---. In saying this, I am not especially condemning W---. I was inexperienced with what it meant to 'live together' and I am quite sure that I did not give W--- all that she might have expected, and that she had just grievances against me for my lack of understanding and patience.

But the first failure does cut the deepest. And of course the two consecutive failures undoubtedly reinforce each other, so that I am now desperately unwilling to risk yet another.

However, as a friend said the other day, never say 'never'. When I think of the people I bump into on holiday, and how in some cases the chemistry seems so promising, I can't at all dismiss the possibility of one more attempt at home-building. But I'm watching myself like a hawk.

Throughout my life I have known people who think they will never be able to give up working hard, not because of personal circumstances, but because gainful activity is in their blood. They need to be mentally stimulated, they enjoy the income, and they are prepared to sacrifice much of their leisure time for regular but brief moments of high-level self-indulgence. To them this self-indulgence is a justifiable and reasonable recompense for the personal effort put in.

They also have the less quantifiable rewards of success and enhanced reputation in their field. They like being on top of whatever game it is, and want the satisfaction and trophies that come with that.

Their self-motivation is often extraordinary: it clearly isn't necessary to be inspired by a morality that imposes a strict work ethic. I dare say that if you probed, you would generally find that they had always been achievers, with interested and encouraging parents at the back of them. But in the end it comes down to the individual. These people work hard and long because it's in their nature, and they will never really retire.

In contrast you have people like me, who always recognised the necessity to work, but regarded it as one of life's chores, something to be endured until age and opportunity offered a release. Then one could really start living, after having put life on hold for so long. 'The Job' was never my reason for existence, and certainly not the thing that defined who I was. It was simply a money-generator, and when release came I turned my back on it and walked away - and have stayed away.

Some would say this is an appalling attitude, and point out the health benefits of working, even if the money isn't needed, and the status-rewards mean nothing. I acknowledge all of that, but remain unmoved. Because I have a prize beyond compare: unlimited freedom. Unlimited leisure to do what I want, when I want, and without having to consult anyone for their permission or approval. I therefore have no need to justify what I get up to, no need to apologise or feel guilty; and I experience no stress or feelings of inadequacy. What I do is my own business, and anyone who thinks they can interfere will get a custard pie in their face. Done in the most friendly fashion, of course - unless they are intent on being a bore or a brute. This freedom is a magnificent prize, and I am not minded to surrender it.

And the freedom makes me powerful, because I have become - for ordinary purposes - untouchable. By which I mean that with no job at stake I can speak my mind without repercussions.

I remember being on a train to work once, and an announcement was made about penalty fares for those travelling without a valid ticket. It didn't bother me, not the message, nor the tone. It seemed like a perfectly fair warning. Shortly afterwards, one of the train crew passed through the carriage. A professional man who looked like a lawyer stopped him, and in a domineering voice asked him whether he was the person who had just made the penalty fares announcement. He said he was. The lawyer then viciously tore into him with with all the sharpest words at his command, threatening him with a personal lawsuit that would, he promised, cost him his job. Apparently the penalty fares announcement, clearly a statement that the crew member hadn't composed himself but was simply reading out, was in some way not strictly accurate. I was sitting not far away. I itched to intervene and rescue the poor man from this legal bully who was sadistically exploiting his nasty way with words. I'm sure that I wasn't the only one to feel that this was inexcusably rude and cruel behaviour, and that the self-important lawyer needed to be taken down a peg or two. But I stayed silent. The right moment to intervene passed. Ingrained caution against speaking up against powerful people, especially persons who might be able to harm one's career, had made me hesitate. I have little doubt that this vindictive lawyer carried out his threat, and that a letter of complaint went to the railway CEO, and that the unfortunate crewman found himself in trouble.

I wouldn't let it happen now. That lawyer would get a no-nonsense reprimand from me. I would embarrass and humiliate him, because I'd have no employer for him to write to, and he wouldn't be able to threaten me. I think it would actually help that I was not quite the usual sort of older woman, but a person he might be reluctant to mess with in an exposed public situation. I could wrong-foot him, because he'd know the law and the danger of any retaliatory slander or harrassment in front of witnesses. He'd soon see that I was dangerous to him. I'd make it my pleasure to throw that custard pie in his face and grind it in. And I would accept cheers from the carriage as I did so. It's a daydream of course, to strike blows for ordinary folk like this. But you see my point: with freedom comes the chance to play the comic-book superheroine for real, and right wrongs.

Retired people are often considered spent forces. They need not be. I don't want a job to earn money. But I think I'd consider being a voice against unfairness and injustice wherever and whenever I encounter it. There is nobody now left in my life to appease. Or be afraid for. Just me. I'm free to speak out if I want to.

We make her paint her face and dance

A dodgy educational history

Niece and nephew have news for me

Signed off - my last visit to Dr Curtis in London

Forty years of Vroom Vroom

My last day out in London - the Tate Modern 1

My last day out in London - the Tate Modern 2

A proposal to the local doctors who look after me

My last day out in London - the Petrie Museum

Shamed. My stupid assumptions, and the lesson to be learned.

Off on my travels again tomorrow

Christine and The New Companions Club

3G rant, a sunny afternoon, and the coming storm

Much Ado About Nothing

It's a gas

Great Aunt Lucy

Being called a slut

Lobster... maybe!

Sitting on a packing case

Freedom to speak out