Ian Whybrow

It’s been a good day. My diary turned up. It was on the glass table in the living room. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there the other three million times I looked - but I don’t want to make a big thing about that. The main thing is - it found its way back to me. I simply applied my usual approach to losing things; I waited. Actually, that’s not quite true; I worried about it a lot, involved a great many people in the hunt for it and had a recurring dream about it slipping down the back of something forever. There’s something else at the dark backward and abysm of my mind. It occurs to me that my wife might be doing a Gaslight on me. I have annoyed her twice recently by allowing my dirty socks to remain in the area of but not exactly in the laundry basket. Hmmm.

The other good things today have been:
1. “Arcadia” on the Radio to celebrate Tom Stoppard’s 70th birthday and his 15-minute Hamlet. Makes yer proud to be British. (Or Czechoslovakian)
2. The loan by Chris (my neighbour-across-the-road) of a masonry bit of just the right callibre to prepare a place for the hook I found that was just the right size to hang up a decorative object that my darling one has wanted hanging from the kitchen wall for several years. He found it for me in spite of the fact that he had just been stuck for hours on the M4 on the journey back from Exeter with a carload of gear from his his son’s room at university. This was neighbourly.
3. I managed the hole with a skill that brings to mind the words “Flynn” and “in” and plugged it with two lovely taps of my hammer. Yesss.
4. On my way across the road to return the bit, I encountered two women I know reasonably well. One of them was trying to apply jump leads from her car to her friend’s. They thanked me for my encouragement and did not sneer at my shameful inability even to locate either battery. I went away. When I came back, both cars were running. “Brilliant!” I said. “How do you know these things?” “Bill, I suppose,” said Maggie. Bill died last year but there he was.

5. There have been three attempts to kill lots people for enjoying themselves or for living in Britain … that didn’t work. We’re waiting for worse news, but meanwhile, the bravery of the people who dealt directly with the danger of those three incidents is something to celebrate.

That’s neighbours for you.