London does what it does best

Wales, May 2026

I returned from my retreats to three weeks of accumulated admin that took some time to clear. Some of the admin is particularly difficult and will occupy me and Lola II (and, to some extent, Sister D) for months. Lola II came over again to do a bit more GRUHI, resulting in two boxes for the tip and seven boxes which were collected by an outfit called Anglo Doorstep Collections. At mum's suggestion, coat hangers went to a dry cleaner, and many pictures from the wall are going to family although there are a few still left to be disposed of. My room and the garage are much emptier, but there's still more to do. Mum is well but finding it difficult to keep up with my hectic lifestyle, so we've implemented an extra level of diary coordination and we'll see if that helps.

The difficult admin demands input from a number of different professionals, including letting agents, estate agents, and an accountant specialising in property or leasing matters. And of course there are works involving a plumber, a decorator and a builder, all of which are still ongoing. To add to this collection I had to go to a local garage rather than my garage in Leamington (to which I had sworn fidelity through thick and thin), because the car had a problem that really couldn't be driven 200 miles to fix. That didn't go well at all, although from their attitude when I came to ransom the car I have a feeling that we were both very unlucky that they uncovered a problem that they honestly felt needed to be fixed.

Mum and I are impressed at all times by Lola II and Mr M who seem to find bargains in every crack in the pavement - this time, a lottery that offers cheap tickets to 'Operation Mincemeat', a musical running in London that Lola II has seen and thought I would like, but is hugely and inconveniently expensive in normal circumstances. So I entered the lottery, and would you know it, within a week I won two affordable tickets. We were in the Upper Circle which made it difficult to hear all the words (and there are a lot of words) but I enjoyed it. Lola II and I also went to see 'Hadestown' at the cinema - a London theatre recording of another musical that I enjoyed even more.

Lola II, Mr M and I also went to a free lecture at the Francis Crick Institute about fruit flies and their value in research of all kinds. The lecturer was astonishingly good, as were the presentation slides that he used, and if any more lectures of interest come up there I'm definitely going. There are past lectures to watch on the website too.

Then we had a look at the London Glassblowing Gallery - it's all arty glass here, nothing that would be of any practical use. Apart from enjoying the spectacle of amazing glass shapes being created before our eyes, I didn't find any of the completed pieces in the gallery all that appealing. But then Lola II took me to the National Gallery, where she picked four paintings for us to look at. This is a much better way of doing things than wandering round completely overwhelmed by the riches on show - looking hard at just four pictures rather than briefly scanning a hundred. It was a very good day. I have to concede that there are some things that London does best.

Phil the Plumber, Maternal Manor, October 2026

Solitary cabin

New Quay, October 2026

I really enjoyed the solitude and quiet of the little cabin near the coast of West Wales. One end has a bed, then there's a sofa, table and chairs, toilet and shower, and kitchen, and there's also a wood burning stove although it was mostly too warm to need to light it. Outside there's a shed with a washing machine and washing line, bins and recycling and spare stuff. The owners live just up the track near the road but far enough away that I didn't hear anything from them.

Going out to explore I reached the local village, with one shop on the main road and a church at the top of the hill. There's a garage with a Post Office in it, a school, a plant nursery and a pub with rooms. I was quite excited on the way back from the village to catch sight of the sea not all that far away, and consulted the map to see how long it might take to walk to the nearest beach - it looked entirely possible on foot (my intention was not to use the car during the solitary). And I did walk there a day or two later, and it wasn't until I got back to the cabin and looked around while standing at the front door that I realised I could see the sea from there too.

The weather was very variable. There was sun, cloud, rain, wind and everything in between, sometimes all on the same day or even within the same hour, but it wasn't properly cold at any point. I'd taken my fleece and raincoat on all my walks and had to take them off and carry them every time, so on the longer walk to the coast I thought I'd take a chance and just go out with a fleece. I was lucky that it only rained very slightly on that trip. 

I am very sad about my poor sense of direction, having to retrace my steps so many times. I didn't get properly lost, just realised, usually quite quickly, that I'm not where I should be. On one long walk I was so proud of having found two very non-obvious footpaths, but my hubris never went unpunished. Although in my defence, half of the marked footpaths have lapsed. I got about two thirds of the way on a long new route, only to encounter a man on a bicycle who told me the footpath was long gone, "disappeared 25 years ago". I had to go back the way I'd come, but I find that following a route in reverse is just as good as the outward journey: new views, with the added bonus that I know I'm going to be able to get home.

A 'cabinet of curiosities' that I passed on one of my walks

Because I'd been told there was only a small freezer I'd had to make plans for cooking, and typically my plans were quite detailed - every meal mapped out and ingredients weighed and taken, judging what might last the longest and what should be cooked first. Twice I cooked enough in three days for eight days, so had five days without needing to cook at all. As well as cooking and walking there was lots of reading and listening to books, some studying ahead of a retreat that's happening in November, a bit of writing for a journal, cards and letters, laundry, and that's about it. If I felt even a tinge of boredom I could remember how in normal life I sometimes long for nothing at all to do, which switched my mind immediately into a state of gratitude and pleasure.

It did get very slightly colder one morning, so I thought I'd explore the wood burning stove. Unfortunately, the wood supplied was in the form of sticks of hardwood and huge tree trunks, with no kindling, firelighters or smaller blocks of wood. I had a go anyway, using a tealight candle, but it was like trying to set fire to a tree trunk with matches. I had a warm bed to sit in if I wanted, and a hot water bottle too, and it wasn't really very cold at all. I could have got in touch with the owners if it had become really chilly.

After two weeks of solitary living, I decided to have two days 'holiday' before going on to my next retreat at Adhisthana. I hoped to do a stretch of the coast walk, but the weather wasn't particularly nice so I drove up the coast to Aberystwyth. It seems like a lovely university town, and I had a pleasant lunch and then went to the cinema. The next day was a bit better, so I took myself off to New Quay, which lays claim to being the model for 'Llareggub', the fishing village described by Dylan Thomas in 'Under Milk Wood'. I had a nice walk along the beach and up to the highest point above the village, then it started to drizzle so I went back.

From the cabin I drove to Adhisthana for a weekend retreat to finish my trip. Seeing lots of my friends from Leamington and Birmingham was a little too stimulating after nearly three weeks without any company at all. Added to that was the fact that the author and teacher Vajragupta was actually there, and had received the postcard I sent him from my solitary cabin, so I was completely starstruck. He was very gracious, as you'd expect.

So my big long break went very well, and I came back refreshed and full of purpose, ready to tackle the ongoing task of clearing out more stuff - GRUHI isn't over yet.

What I've been reading

Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth
by Natalie Haynes

narrated by the Author

"A female-centred look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires are as mighty, revered and destructive as their male counterparts."

I get the idea that this is a spinoff from her brilliant Radio 4 series, and she presents this view of Greek and Roman myth from the unfamiliar female perspective. Which shines a light on the horrific treatment of women - both human and divine - which appeared to be completely routine in those days. This takes me down a rabbit hole of 'what has actually changed since then' but of course things are different now. I am able to exist very comfortably as an unmarried childless woman without having to be dependent on a man or being some sort of priestess serving a deity. Anyway, back to the book - she writes very well and reads it well too, and I enjoyed it without necessarily being likely to remember much about Demeter or Hestia or even Aphrodite.

North Woods
by Daniel Mason

"When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants. As each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive."

For the first half of the book I wasn't sure why this had been recommended to me. It seemed like a collection of not very interesting vignettes tied together only by them happening one after another in the same house in the woods. The second half of the book, where the stories were linked by some of the same characters - and then earlier characters - was much more satisfying. If I could be bothered I would re-read the first half, but that's not going to happen.

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp
by Leonie Swann

"It's an eventful day at Sunset Hall, a house-share for the old and unruly, when the police arrive with news that a body has been discovered next door. Everyone, including Agnes Sharp, is secretly relieved that the body in question is not the one they're currently hiding in the shed."

This is a whodunnit where the main mystery is predicated on the fact that all the elderly and eccentric characters have some sort of memory loss or dementia, and is therefore incredibly annoying. I wanted to know the resolution of all the mystery - at least six deaths were revealed, not all of them in the present - but it was tough to stick with it up to the end. And the tortoise, which I thought might have some role to play beyond being mentioned at every possible opportunity, turned out to be completely irrelevant. I did not enjoy it.

Dear Fatty
by Dawn French

"With a sharp eye for comic details and wicked ear for the absurdities of life, Dawn French shows just how an RAF girl from the West Country rose to become one of the best-loved actresses of our time."

I wouldn't normally choose to read an autobiography by a celebrity, but I picked this off the shelf at the place I was staying on retreat as a last resort when nothing else I'd tried had helped me go to sleep one night. She's had an interesting life, and as far as I know has done her best to work and raise a family under the awful constraints that 'celebrity' brings. It didn't much help in getting me to sleep though.

The Discomfort of Evening
by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

"Ten-year-old Jas has a unique way of experiencing her universe: the feeling of udder ointment on her skin as protection against harsh farmyard winters; the texture of green warts, like capers, on migrating toads; the sound of 'blush words' that aren't in the Bible. But when a tragic accident ruptures the family her curiosity warps into a wild vortex of disturbing fantasies - unlocking a darkness that threatens to derail them all."

Another book off the shelf of the solitary cabin, but this time a desperate, bleak, disturbing book, full of unpleasantness, misery, cruelty and death. I ought to have stopped reading, but I couldn't believe there would be no redemption, no chink of light somewhere at the end of the relentless onslaught of tragedy and pain. But there wasn't. It was horrible.

The Fisherman's Gift
by Julia Kelly

"Winter, 1900. A little boy washes up on the beach of a small fishing village in Scotland, barely alive. He bears an uncanny resemblance to teacher Dorothy's son, lost to the sea many years before. When the village is snowed in, Dorothy agrees to look after the child until he can be returned home."

Another off the shelf in the solitary cabin, which I'd hoped (and expected) would last until I left, but was not only easy to read but also drew me on into the story. So it was hard to put down, and such a relief compared with the last one. Yes, it contained pain and tragedy, but there was also love and redemption and a flow to the narrative that made it possible to bear the difficult aspects of the story. Not a masterpiece, but I'm glad I read it. Now I've got to decide whether to start another of the books on the shelf...

Wild Awake: Alone, Offline and Aware in Nature
by Vajragupta

"What is it like to be completely alone, attempting to face your experience with only nature for company? Buddhist teacher and author, Vajragupta, has been doing just that every year for twenty-five years. Here he recounts how these "solitary retreats" have changed him, how he fell in love with the places he stayed in and the creatures there."

I take this book and read it every time I go on a solitary retreat. I know the author personally, I admire him and his writing, and was fortunate enough to be part of his team when he ran retreats based loosely around the contents of the book. I even sent him a postcard from the recent retreat expressing some of my gratitude. Aside from all that hero worship, it's a great book in itself, and despite having read it and dipped into it so many times I'm still finding passages that I don't remember reading before.

Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell

"On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week."

This book actually does live up to the hype, it's a masterpiece and a treasure. I resisted reading it because I've seen the film, and I don't usually like to mix the media, although usually I've read the book and therefore avoid the film. But in this case the perfect casting of Agnes and Will and the phenomenal performance of Jessie Buckley actually enhanced the reading experience, which was absolutely wonderful. I wish I'd been able to make it last longer.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It
by Oliver Burkeman

"We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time-management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet."

This was given to me a couple of years ago by Vajragupta, the author of Wild Awake (above), and I've been meaning to re-read it for some time. I seem to remember finding it interesting the first time through, but I'm in a completely different mental state now that I'm coming to the end of two weeks of solitary living with very little distractions or external inputs, and its messages are having a more direct impact. Recently I've been starting to visualise facing backwards as my life progresses - I see what's in the past, the recent past more clearly than the distant, and I travel blindly into the future making the best of what I can guess or imagine is ahead. The idea is attractive that decision-making is less about what to do than what not to do, and allows me to be content with a much more spacious life, setting aside ambitions that will never happen and uncluttered with regret about unfulfilled potential. And the fact that nothing most of us will do is particularly important in the long run, and our lives are of such short duration in the universal scheme of things doesn't lower my mood, rather it takes the pressure off the need to make everything count. Pick a few important things, do the next and most necessary thing, and don't worry about underachieving or failing, and accept that I'm never going to be able to do all the things on my list.

The Oyster saga

Kew Gardens, May 2026

In London the Tube has been transformed within my lifetime, with the demise of smoking carriages, air conditioning introduced into some lines (particularly the new ones), free passage along the length of the train, and (to my sorrow) the Circle Line no longer being circular. The graffiti remains consistently present, though. I thought the Oyster card was quite a good idea when it was introduced, removing the delays in ticket buying, standardising fares in Zones, and bringing tube and buses together into one payment system.

It was Mr M who told me that I could link my Oyster card and my Senior Railcard to get discounts. I looked online for instructions, and it said I needed to create an Oyster account, then go to the railway staff in person with my card. For quite a while I'd been using my contactless bank card, but to get the discount I had to use my actual Oyster card, which was in Leamington. Having discovered its location, the next time I came to London I brought my ancient Oyster card, but then I discovered that to get the linking and discounts it had to have been used in the last six weeks.

So I topped up and used the Oyster card, but although I had a Transport for London (TfL) account with my Oyster linked to it, tapping into machine said 'not registered'. I thought it might be too soon as I had only linked the Oyster earlier that day. Home I went to Leamington.

Next time I brought the Oyster card and used it, but it still showed up as not registered. Lola II looked at what I had done, and we decided that what I'd created was a Transport for London account, and I probably needed to create a separate Oyster account. So I did that, went back to the station, but the system still didn't recognise the card as registered. All of these steps took even longer when you count all the times I asked for help at a station but the appropriate people who could log into the system were not available.

Next, I phoned the number on the card, which started with 0845 and my phone warned me was obsolete. It really is a very old card, probably one of the first wave to be sold. I found a more up-to-date phone number, and a very helpful lady said despite my card not showing as registered, the train staff should be able to complete the registration on a machine in the station - I just hadn't yet found the right person.

During the extensive phone menus one thing I had heard mentioned was the issue of 'original Oyster cards'. So mentioned this to the helpful lady, who thought a bit more and gave me a reference number to use. If station staff still couldn't help I might need to buy a new card, in which case I could phone their number with this reference and I would be refunded the cost of the new card.

I'd been trying to get this sorted for about six months by this time, and I did consider just giving up, especially as I had no idea (and still don't know) how much the discounts might be on journeys that I take. One thing that the Oyster system has certainly removed is any idea of how much journeys actually cost. Anyway, I finally resolved to take my problem to central London rather than the stations local to Maternal Manor or Lola II and Mr M's house.

I explained the problem to one of the staff, who directed me to the other side of the station where I explained it again. I was all ready with the phone number and reference number that the helpful lady had given me on the phone, but he took my card, I entered my post code, he entered my senior railcard number and Bingo! it was done. I think he was slightly taken aback by my rejoicing - I insisted on a high five - but it was such a relief to find someone who really knew what they were doing.

I've now received my 60+ Oyster card, so I'm not even using that one any more. Should I try to link it to my Senior Railcard?