Absolute essentials

My parents weren't much good at teaching me how to think, how to have my own opinions, how to be sociable, or how to express my emotions. But they did teach me some of the absolute essentials:

• To wear clean knickers in case I'm in a car crash and have to go to hospital
• To check there are no bits of spinach stuck in my teeth
• Not to talk with my mouth full
• Not to put my elbows on the table when I'm eating
• Not to gulp down my food but chew it thoroughly
• Not to leave anything on my plate ("Some people are starving")
• To say "I beg your pardon" rather than "What?"
• To say "Thank you" rather than "Ta" (or the more recent "Cheers")
• Not to talk to strange men with a funny look in their eyes
• Not to write silly comments inside books
• Not to cheek my elders and betters (well, it was the 1950s)
• Not to swear but moderate my language
• Not to make weird facial expressions ("You'll get stuck like that")
• To look left, right and left again before crossing the road
• Not to leave my shoelaces undone or I might trip over them

Needless to say, most of those went by the board as soon as I left home and escaped the clutches of my fastidious parents (though to be fair most other parents probably had similar strictures). Not all of them however. I don't talk to strange men with a funny look in their eyes (especially if they're politicians). But I still make weird facial expressions (especially if I'm listening to politicians). I still gulp down my food as if I haven't eaten for a month. And I still talk with my mouth full - I'm afraid that by the time my mouth is empty I'll have forgotten what I was going to say.

And I can't guarantee to be wearing clean knickers at all times.

Past and gone

Some people seem to be in love with the past. They look back nostalgically at some supposed "golden age", they wish they could be twenty again, they dwell on blissful memories from fifty years ago, they keep countless momentos of their childhood.

I'm not like that at all. I'm more than happy to leave the past behind and move on into the future. Not because the past was terrible or embarrassing or difficult (though it was just that often enough), but simply because it's all over and done with whereas the future is full of novel and exciting possibilities.

I don't believe in any "golden age". All golden ages had plenty of horrors and calamities along with the delights. I don't want to be twenty again. Life was tough at that age, full of disappointments born of inexperience and naivety. And I suspect most of my blissful memories are by now wild exaggerations that bear little resemblance to the long-gone reality.

No, I much prefer to relish the present and wait expectantly for whatever surprises the future has in store. Even the virus lockdown, frustrating as it is, in a way is exciting precisely because we have little idea of what's going to happen next. The past is all settled, frozen in aspic, while the future is still evolving and mutating.

I possess very few reminders of the past, at least prior to Jenny's appearance. I have only one photo of me and my sister at a tender age, and one or two photos of my parents and grandparents. I haven't kept anything from my schooldays - uniforms or reports or prizes. I don't have any old letters or diaries or notes to the milkman. I have far more memories than tangible momentos.

For me the past is all water under the bridge. But I'm always eager to know what tomorrow will bring.

Always a journo

Kylie reckons I'm "ever in journalist mode". Which is surely an awful thing to be, but she might be right. After all, I spent six years as a journalist, so some of the journalist culture must have rubbed off on me, like it or not.

Jenny thinks there's still a bit of the journalist in me. I like inventing spoof tabloid headlines ("Refund joy for tearful Belfast couple"), and I do tend to over-react to a dramatic piece of news.

But despite the residual journalistic quirks, I'm still very critical of journalism and the way it distorts, trivialises and sensationalises important issues. I've never regretted leaving journalism for bookselling, even though many people thought I was crazy.

Apart from anything else, journalism nowadays is hard work. Long hours, low salaries, unpaid internships, constant redundancies. It's a far cry from the well-paid, leisurely, drunken activity it was in the sixties.

But I've never properly explained why I left journalism. Just a few of the reasons:

• So often it never gets to the heart of an issue. It trots out a few basic facts and seldom digs deeper or asks awkward questions.
• It spreads rumours and gossip about celebrities and public figures, much of it malicious and untrue.
• It encourages prejudice of all kinds - racism, sexism, xenophobia, hatred of welfare "scroungers" etc.
• It turns minor incidents into huge controversies (famous actress has wardrobe malfunction)
• It's hypocritical. For example, it laments climate breakdown, but welcomes consumerism and long-distance travel.
• It runs with every fad and fashion, however absurd or irresponsible or pointless.

In the end I just felt uncomfortable as a journalist. There were so many dubious practices I simply couldn't buy into. Bookselling by comparison suited me down to the ground. All I had to do was sell interesting books to interesting people. Nothing uncomfortable there. It kept me happy for 23 highly enjoyable years.

But I still admire a clever tabloid headline.

Skill shortage

Goodness, life is full of surprises. Two commenters who read my post on pretensions suggested I feel superior to other people. Well, I'm always open to such observ-ations and I always mull them over, but this one has me baffled.

If anything I feel inferior to other people. There are so many people with the edge over me in one way or another, I often feel inadequate and incompetent by comparison. Other people have all sorts of skills that leave me standing. For example:

• They're more intelligent. They understand things quicker, they respond faster, they can follow complicated novels and TV plots.
• They're more practical. They can do basic plumbing or electrical repairs, they can insulate the loft, even build their own house.
• They're better informed. While I skim all those articles about neoliberalism or climate breakdown, they read them studiously and absorb all the details.
• They have better memories. I can barely recall a conversation from yesterday, never mind what I was doing twenty years ago.
• They're more emotionally literate. They can read other people's feelings and unspoken reactions, while I often miss them.
• They have better social skills. They find it easier to organise social gatherings, talk to other people, and smooth over awkward moments.
• They're more adventurous. They backpack around the world, start businesses, move to remote islands, run mega-marathons.
• They can play musical instruments. Often several instruments. And they've spent many arduous years learning to play them.
• They appreciate opera and classical music. I've tried hard to share their enthusiasm but I'm just not on the same wavelength.
• They can write novels. Often very long novels. I tried to write a novel once but got writer's block after 100 pages. And it was a crappy novel.

I've probably left out many other things, but that's plenty. Far from feeling superior, I feel like a very ordinary, very untalented, not especially bright human being. There's not much to feel superior about.

A delicious merlot

Being a fairly straight-forward person (I hope), I can sniff out pretentious-ness in a split second, as can (and could) the rest of my family. So I'm fond of describing other people as pretentious.

But what exactly does pretentious mean? I would say any or all of the following:

• Name dropping ("As Ian McEwan once said to Zadie Smith....")
• Claiming to know all about some obscure topic ("Of course marine biology has a lot to say about coral reefs")
• Claiming to have met lots of famous people ("As I was saying to Greta Thunberg....")
• Posing as a connoisseur of wine ("A delicious merlot. Strong alpine notes with overtones of pampas grass")
• Claiming to have read every significant book ("I absolutely adore Ulysses. Molly Bloom is quite unforgettable")
• Purporting to be generally better educated, more discerning, more sophisticated ("Anyone with half a brain can see the economy is about to collapse")
• Slavishly following the latest fashions ("My dear, bootleg jeans are so last year")
• Maintaining that difficult, laborious novels are superior to ones that are readable and uncomplicated ("The reader should have to do a bit of work")
• Concocting ridiculous explanations of art works ("James is interested in the interface between spatial awareness and partial enclosure")
• Liking restaurants that offer tiny meals with strange ingredients rather than a good plateful of something with chips ("This chef is so wonderfully experimental")
• Peppering your conversation with foreign phrases ("It was a coup de theatre, a performance sans pareil")

I think you'll have the general idea by now. So au revoir, mes amis, wishing you oodles of joie de vivre and esprit de corps. Á chacun son goût, as Pablo Picasso once said.

PS: Jean thinks I'm being pretentious myself by acting superior to people who're pretentious. Could she be right?

Leap in the dark

Living with Jenny now seems like the most natural thing in the world, but it wasn't always like that. It took me a long time to decide that yes, we could probably live together without driving each other nuts.

Falling in love was easy enough. We took a shine to each other the moment we met and that has never faded. But for me living together was a major commitment that might or might not have worked out.

I had had affairs with several other women and the first question that always came to mind was, could we live together harmoniously or would we wind up clawing each other to pieces? I rather suspected it would be the second.

So although Jenny was keen to live with me very early on, it took a fair bit of persuading for me to agree to give it a try. I had to swallow the possibility that we might be driven crazy by each other's infuriating habits and tastes and end up calling it a day.

After all, I had lived on my own for 6½ years and got used to my own company. How would I adjust to suddenly living with someone else, someone I still knew very little about and might be the totally impossible flatmate from hell? It was a big leap in the dark, but one I took because in the end it felt like the right thing to do.

Needless to say, in the early days of cohabiting we had plenty of squabbles and bones of contention, but we discovered our relationship was solid enough to survive them without falling apart. And 39 years later, we still have squabbles and bones of contention and we still settle them amicably.

Far from driving each other nuts, we've nourished each other in a thousand different ways.

University of life

How true that formal education only goes so far and most of our education is from the university of life. Anyone who imagines they will leave school fully equipped for adulthood will be rapidly disabused.

When I look back at my schooldays, it's laughable how many essential adult skills they never taught me and how naive and ignorant I was until I enlarged my education by other means.

I may have absorbed plenty of French, Latin, Mathematics and Chemistry, but my awareness of anything other than academic was abysmal.

One glaring omission was any knowledge of women. I went to two single-sex schools and saw little of the other sex before I started work. It took me a while to adjust to these strange beings with their very different view of life.

I never learnt any practical skills apart from woodwork (Why woodwork? You may well ask). I'm still an ignorant bungler when it comes to cookery, clothing repairs and alterations, painting, electrics, plumbing, or car mechanics. I wasn't taught anything about money matters like banking, mortgages, insurance, wills or tax returns. All those things I had to find out for myself over the years.

And what of all those social skills I only picked up after leaving school - dating, sexual relationships, holding down a job, dealing with difficult people, being true to myself, being discreet, and how to behave at things like leaving dos, marriages, births and funerals. About the only social skills I acquired at school were dodging bullies and routinely exposing my naked body.

Probably the most useful skill the university of life has taught me is critical thinking. When I was young I was remarkably gullible and would happily soak up other people's ideas. Gradually I learnt to look at those ideas more carefully and see if they actually made sense or not. An awful lot of them didn't.

A skill that's been much more useful than chemistry.

Final regrets

I was remem-bering the five major regrets people have on their deathbed, as recorded by an Australian woman who spent many years looking after dying patients.

• "I wish I'd been true to myself, not to what others expected of me"
• "I wish I hadn't worked so hard"
• "I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends"
• "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings"
• "I wish I'd let myself be happier"

If I was on my own deathbed, I wouldn't quote the first three. I've always been pretty much true to myself and resisted people's attempts to turn me into someone else.

I've never worked especially hard, and I never took a job requiring long hours and constant pressure. As for friends, I never had many to start with, but I've kept in touch with those that remain, and with my family.

But I do think I don't express my feelings enough, I suppress them and assume nobody wants to know about them. And I wish I could be more relaxed and easy-going and let myself be happier and less anxious.

There must be other regrets people mention - like not travelling more while they were fit enough to do so, not having a healthy enough lifestyle, not being very good parents, or pursuing the wrong career.

I'm not generally prone to regret. Disappointment is as far as I go. I remain disappointed for example that I didn't have a closer relationship with my mum in the years before she died. As hard as I tried to get through to her, she always kept me at a distance and never revealed very much of herself.

I'm disappointed that I have several friends in Australia who I hardly ever see because of the distance between us. Yes, we keep in touch through our blogs or Facebook pages or email, but that's never the same as face-to-face meetings. Why can't Australia be a bit nearer?

Damn geography.

Under siege

This constant threat posed by the coronavirus is causing the most dramatic sense of being "under siege" I've ever experienced in my lifetime. Nothing else comes near to it. I didn't live through the Second World War, I didn't live through the Troubles, I've never faced repeated flooding or being caught in turf wars by drug dealers. For me this is something very new and very strange.

I'm reminded of under-siege situations I've been through in the past, but they're utterly trivial by comparison. They were hugely stressful at the time but compared to what we're living through now, they pale into insignificance. I wasn't facing the possibility of an agonising death. I wasn't liable to be infected by absolutely anyone I came too close to. I wasn't at serious risk whenever I went out to the shops. They were just difficult situations that came and went.

Several times I've been "under siege" by neighbours. People who were endlessly noisy, people with drink problems, people who had all-night parties, people clattering across wooden floors in high heels.

Now I think, well, I may have had annoying neighbours, but at least I could still go into the outside world without the threat of deadly germs everywhere I went. At least I could continue my everyday life without every step restricted by the two-metre rule.

At least Jenny and I are under siege together. We can discuss how it feels, how it's affecting our daily life, how long it might last, and how well the government is handling the situation (answer - not very well at all). It must be worse for people living on their own, maybe with nobody to talk to or vent their feelings with. I feel a bit like a small child again, only allowed to leave the house if I promise to be VERY VERY careful and not do anything silly.

It gets worse

There have been some huge social changes in my lifetime, one being the lowering of expect-ations from one generation to the next. Things my generation took for granted and confidently anticipated are now impossible fantasies for many young people.

When I was young, it was readily assumed that as people got older they would buy their own home, have a permanent job working reasonable hours, earn generous salaries, have enjoyable and fulfilling jobs (as long as they had a good education), belong to a trade union that constantly improved their wages and working conditions, always be solvent (except for a mortgage), and get excellent medical treatment.

Boy, has all that changed, and changed radically. All those expectations have been blown to smithereens by various political and economic twists and turns.

What do today's young people expect? Unless they have wealthy parents, or parents with good connections, or a family business, or exceptional skills or talents, or a shedload of luck, then probably the following:

• Be unable to afford their own home
• Pay an extortionate rent or still live with their parents
• Have a temporary job or zero-hours contract working at any time of the day
• Have a miserable salary
• Have a boring and impossibly demanding job
• Not be in a trade union as they're no longer so powerful
• Never be solvent and face a lifetime of debt
• Have poor medical treatment because the NHS is hopelessly overloaded

When I was young, it was assumed that every future generation would have a better life than the one before. We never dreamt they would have a worse life, with new burdens and obstacles we knew nothing of. And we never dreamt they would be blaming the older generation for the deterioration.

I worry that after the present virus emergency is over, with probably the loss of thousands of jobs, the young will have even worse prospects. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Publish and be damned

Controversy rages over whether Woody Allen's Memoir "Apropos of Nothing" should have been published, given he's now got a rather seedy reputation and seems to be something of an unrepentant misogynist. And given that it's published, should we buy it or read it?

Well, the irony is that according to those who've read it, like Catherine Bennett in the Guardian, it's not at all a whitewash job crushing all the accusations and portraying him as a jolly decent chap who's been unfairly maligned. On the contrary, it makes his rampant misogyny crystal clear and destroys his once shiny reputation.

In which case we should all be reading it to acquaint ourselves with his thoroughly predatory attitudes.

But the row once again raises the question, is it right to ban books, or any other artistic product, because of the off-stage behaviour of the person concerned?

To my mind, a person's artistic output should be judged on its intrinsic merit, and however reprehensible their personal life, that's an entirely separate issue.

Once you start saying a book should be boycotted because of the author's "misbehaviour", you're politicising it and weaponising it. Art shouldn't be a political football, it should be a cultural experience pure and simple.

Otherwise what's the difference between right-on politicos shunning the work of a "misogynist" author and a government banning a book it deems "immoral" or "subversive" or "unpatriotic"? They're both claiming the right to decide for the rest of us what's in the public interest and what isn't. And who gave them that right? Not me, for one.

All the controversy has just whetted my appetite to read the book and see for myself just how much unbridled lechery was hidden behind the charming facade.

PS: Here's a more positive review of the book - https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/120726348/book-review-apropos-of-nothing-by-woody-allen

Compensation culture

So Jenny and I may be in lockdown, and unable to indulge some of our familiar outside pleasures - coffee and pastries at Caffè Nero, a Fiorentina at Pizza Express, a movie at the Queens Film Theatre, or a new art exhibition at the Metropolitan Arts Centre - but we're compensating with a little more of our usual domestic pleasures:

• A few glasses of New Zealand or Aussie white wine
• Peppermint Aero, Twix, Lindt truffles
• A long walk round the huge Stormont estate (walking is allowed)
• A Scrabble tournament - so far Jenny 4, Nick 4. I scraped ahead in the seventh game with "XI" (fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet), which scores 9
• Watching DVDs. We've just ordered two more - Notting Hill and Gimme Shelter (the Stones film, not the other one)
• Watching Location Location Location. I love nosing around other people's homes - and potential homes
• Reading books voraciously. My current read is The Narrow Land by Christine Dyer Hickey. The one before was Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• Listening to music. Especially Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, Laura Mvula, Annie Lennox, Courtney Barnett
• Doing sudokus. Jenny can do the really tricky ones that always defeat me
• Watching the spring growth in the garden. The camellia bush is finally flowering, weeks after everyone else's 
• Seeing what's new on Facebook. No cute kittens recently
• The usual free-wheeling political discussions in which we put the world to rights, find an antidote for the coronavirus, instigate world peace, finish off capitalism, and wonder when Labour's going to get its act together

What could be more enjoyable? But it's a slightly guilty enjoyment knowing that out there thousands of people are dying, leaving grief-stricken loved ones, health workers aren't properly protected from the virus (my niece is a nurse in Cambridge), and thousands of people are losing their jobs and facing destitution.

Frightening doesn't begin to describe the desperate situation we're all in.

Still posh

I've always found regional accents fascinating and rather charming, as long as they aren't so thick as to be indeciph-erable (Glaswegian for example). But there's a lot of prejudice against certain accents. My mum hated the cockney accent, which she saw as ugly and grating.

I love the Liverpudlian accent, also the Australian and Irish accents. Apart from anything else, they make a nice change from the posh English accent, which is still the one you hear most in movies and on TV.

People read all sorts of things into accents. Whether someone is trustworthy, whether they behave well or badly, whether they're acceptably British or not, whether they're employable or not.

And those prejudices change from one year to the next. Regional British accents used to be seen as off-putting and quaint, but now they're often sought after because many people find them warmer and friendlier than posh English, which can come across as cold and arrogant.

My own accent is still posh English, despite being in Northern Ireland for twenty years. It can be hard to shed a well-established accent even if everyone around you has a different one. People who speak English as a second language quite often still have the accent of their original language, however much they try to lose it.

I find it rather ridiculous when politicians try to boost their popularity by erasing their posh English delivery and putting on a more proletarian accent. Those folk with the genuine article must find such antics absurdly unconvincing.

Oo do they fink they're fooling, guv?

Pic: Cockney money slang. Godivas, fivers; monkeys, £500; ponies, £25; edges, 50p; carpets, £30.

Who knows best?

Goodness, how attitudes to authority have changed in my lifetime. If my ten-year-old self had been told how dramatic-ally respect for "authority" would drain away in the next few decades, he would have been gob-smacked.

When I was young, we habitually deferred to authority figures of whatever kind. Be they government ministers, civil servants, police officers, teachers or parents, we invariably did what they told us to do because "they knew best" and "they were in charge". The idea of seriously rebelling against them, of routinely challenging their wisdom, was pretty unthinkable.

That all changed in the sixties when young people everywhere finally decided authority figures didn't necessarily know best and started questioning just about everything they said. They railed against the rigid ideas of "the establishment" and "the system" and demanded wholesale changes.

The authority figures didn't know what had hit them. They had to adjust rapidly as their ideas and assumptions were torn to bits by bolshy teenagers and uppity undergrads attacking homophobia, sexism, racism, apartheid and any number of other isms and entrenched beliefs.

The rebellious trend continued apace until now hardly any authority figure can open their mouth without someone shouting "bollocks" or doubting their expertise and credibility. They struggle to convince people they actually have something worthwhile to say.

The Brexit campaigners took this trend to its ultimate extreme, declaring that "experts" weren't to be trusted and that the opinion of the person in the street was as valid as so-called expert opinion. If Joanna Somebody thought Brexit would be a fantastic success, wasn't that good enough?

And then suddenly the coronavirus epidemic arrived, and all at once people were listening to the experts again - even the Prime Minister. Only the medical specialists knew all about the virus and what measures were needed to combat it. A dramatic about-turn by the know-it-all politicians and pundits.

After the epidemic is over, will experts once again be trusted? Only time will tell.

Four legged friends

So we're all looking for something to distract us from the never-ending coronavirus coverage. Something amusing, something quirky, something intriguing. And something to break the monotony of self-isolation. I have the answer - all those things you never knew about cats.

• Cats spend 70 per cent of their lives sleeping, around 13-16 hours a day.
• Stubbs the cat was mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, from July 1997 till his death in July 2017. Stubbs was flooded with cards and letters, and drew 30 to 40 tourists a day hoping to meet the mayor.
• The world's longest cat was a Maine coon called Stewie, measuring 48.5 inches. The tallest cat is Arcturus, a Savannah cat from Southfield, Michigan, measuring 19.05 inches.
• A house cat can reach speeds of up to 30 mph.
• The oldest ever cat was Creme Puff, who was 38 years and 3 days when he died in August 2005 in Austin, Texas.
• The record for the loudest purr by a domestic cat is held by Merlin, a black and white cat from Torquay, Devon. His purr is 67.8 decibels, nearly the same volume as a shower! Most cats purr at around 25 decibels.
• Unlike humans, cats can't detect sweetness.
• Cats only use their meows to talk to humans, not each other.
• The average cat can jump eight feet in a single bound, nearly six times its body length.
• A cat's sense of smell is 14 times better than a human's.
• Cats only sweat through their paws and nowhere else on their body.
• A group of cats is called a clowder.
• A cat can rotate its ears 180 degrees - with the help of 32 ear muscles.
• A cat's nose is as unique as a human's fingerprint.
• A cat's heart beat is almost double that of humans, from 110 to 140 beats a minute.
• A male cat's left paw is typically its dominant paw, while female cats are usually right-pawed.
• Cats can spend up to a third of their waking hours grooming.
• Cats will refuse an unpalatable food to the point of starvation.
• Female cats can get pregnant when they are only four months old.
• Grapes, raisins, onions, garlic and chives are extremely harmful to cats.

So you see, for three whole minutes you didn't think of the virus. Don't you feel better for it? Of course you do. Next up: all those things you never knew about toilet rolls.

Give us a kiss

There's still a widespread dislike of public displays of affection. "That sort of thing" should take place in private and well away from curious bystanders. Your passionate kissing and canoodling is an unwanted distraction to those around you.

That's certainly the attitude here in Belfast. It's very unusual to see a couple kissing, holding hands, embracing or just stroking each other fondly. If they're greeting each other, or saying farewell, they might hug or kiss, but in general such behaviour in public is strictly taboo.

Some people would go so far as to say they find such displays "disgusting" or "vulgar", while others just find them embarrassing or theatrical.

Personally I'm not bothered by public affection, as long it doesn't descend into anything overtly sexual. I like to see people showing their love for each other. It's especially nice to see older couples holding hands or kissing. And it's equally nice to see young couples in the first flush of romance and enjoying each other's bodies. Why shouldn't they?

Of course it's mainly heterosexual couples who indulge in such public affection. Despite more relaxed attitudes to sexual preferences, gay couples still aren't free to express their feelings so visibly in case of hostile reactions. It's quite a surprise when I see a couple of women or a couple of men holding hands or kissing. It's still a brave thing to do.

When I was growing up, it was generally understood that the back row of the cinema was reserved for amorous couples, exploring each other as enthusiastically as they liked. I'm not sure if that tradition still holds but certainly there's no sign of it at our local cinemas. Patrons of the Queens Film Theatre are far too genteel to favour "that sort of thing".

I like shows of affection. Much better than shows of hatred.

PS: Jenny points out that a woman might feel uncomfortable about a public embrace, but is loath to make a fuss in the midst of a busy street.

PPS: The coronavirus has put rather a dampener on any kind of intimacy for the time being....

Dodgy doors

I bet you've never given a second thought to revolving doors. You enter, you exit, and that's that. They're of no more interest than a lamppost.

I hadn't thought about them myself until Wednesday, when I went through a revolving door and collided with a glass panel next to the door. Luckily I didn't break anything but my nose was bleeding profusely for several minutes.

When I googled "revolving door injuries", I found they were quite common. People have had broken noses, broken teeth, hip fractures, skull and brain injuries. So I got off lightly with my bleeding nose.

Then I got to wondering, what's the point of revolving doors anyway? Why not just have an ordinary door or an automatic sliding door? Supposedly, revolving doors speed up exit and entry, and reduce heat loss from the building. But does that justify any possible injuries? I think not.

It's interesting that a 2006 study found that only 20 to 30 per cent of people use revolving doors when given the option. I have to wonder why so many people avoid them. I suppose they might be afraid of injuring themselves or getting trapped in them. They might be too heavy to push, or the compartments might be claustrophobically narrow.

Of course you could say the accident was probably my own fault for not looking where I was going. That's as may be, but I don't want to risk another injury - possibly a worse one. I shall now keep well away from revolving doors and use ordinary doors instead. I haven't bashed my nose on one yet.

PS: I was lucky Jenny was with me and she happened to have a plaster to stem the bleeding.

PPS: Both revolving doors and ordinary doors are a coronavirus hazard, since they have to be pushed and hundreds of people have touched the same door. Automatic sliding doors are preferable as you don't have to touch them.

Cruising for a bruising

Jenny and I were never much interested in cruising. Being cooped up on a boat with thousands of other people, with maybe only fleeting visits to the various cities en route, isn't our cup of tea.

We may have had a lucky escape. Now there are three cruise ships in lockdown over a mass of coronavirus cases (one in Yokohama, Japan, one in Oakland, California, and one in Luxor, Egypt) cruising looks distinctly risky right now. Passengers on other cruise ships must fear they too will catch the virus before they get back home. Then they'll have to go through the same ordeal of being in quarantine and possibly having to change their onward travel arrangements.

The chance of catching the virus is increased by the fact that the air conditioning on a cruise ship is constantly recirculating the air and helping to transmit the virus to previously healthy passengers.

A lot of people are so worried about any kind of travel, in case they pick up the virus while travelling, that the hospitality industry has been badly hit. Hotels, restaurants and airlines have seen such a huge slump in bookings that they're facing big financial losses.

Personally I don't think travelling is any more risky than going into a crowded supermarket or a crowded cinema. The chance of catching the virus from a random stranger is surely very remote. Jenny and I are still planning to visit Vienna in early summer, which seems sensible enough given that Vienna has so far only had 50 confirmed cases (most of them recovered and no longer infectious) in a population of nearly two million.

My attitude is, either I catch the virus or I don't. There's no point in worrying myself to death over it.

Pic: The Diamond Princess, now docked in Oakland

Private agonies

When I was young I used to think that although a few people were psychologically screwed-up and overwhelmed by life, most of us were healthy, well-adjusted individuals who found life easy to deal with.

It's only now, with a lifetime's experience behind me, that I realise that actually the vast majority of people are in some way psychologically damaged and find life an endless struggle. Very few people are lucky enough to have got through life without traumatic or calamitous experiences of some kind, experiences that often leave life-long mental and emotional scars.

Just scratch the surface of someone's seemingly calm exterior and you can open quite a can of worms. It could be something as simple as persistent self-loathing or as complicated as a heap of paranoid delusions. We're all hiding some inner demon we'd rather not display or talk about, and pretending we're as normal as apple pie.

It's good that more and more people are finding the courage to break the silence and reveal their personal agonies. Celebrities in particular are confessing to their eating disorders, acute anxiety, crippling depression or secret fears. And that encourages the rest of us to be equally candid.

I think my father had a bucket-full of inner demons but he never talked about them. He felt he had to be the tough, resilient, dependable head of the household and must never show vulnerability or weakness. We might have had a closer relationship if he'd been able to expose himself more.

I've blogged in the past about my many neuroses and hang-ups due to my dysfunctional parenting, boarding school bullying etc etc. I've managed to have a fulfilling life despite all the inner snarl-ups, and I feel better for revealing so much private turmoil. Bottling it all up is dangerous - sooner or later something has to give and it won't be pretty.

As the old saying goes, Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.

Tangled hair

Why shouldn't women (or men for that matter) colour their hair any way they want? If they fancy being pink, purple, red, yellow, blue or green, why not? Doesn't it make life more interesting, more fun?

You and I may think that, but for many people apparently it's more bewildering than interesting. An unusual hair colour conjures up all sorts of weird stereotypes about the person concerned.

If they don't instantly suspect you're a druggie, a prostitute or a nutcase, they'll decide you're a wild unreliable party girl, or your boss will say you look too unprofessional for a public-facing role.

There are still plenty of prejudices around hair. Ginger hair can attract snarky remarks. Afro hair styles are frowned on by many employers. Grey hair can make a woman "too old for the job".

Length itself is still an issue. Women are expected to have long hair, men short hair. Even schoolboys have been excluded from school for having over-long hair. I had long hair once in my John Lennon phase, but I've had short hair ever since - a lot more manageable.

And of course there's baldness. Perfectly okay for men (though a lot of men hate being bald and would rather not be). But not okay for women. If you have cancer, then baldness is acceptable. Otherwise it's shocking and ugly and surely you should be wearing a wig.

It's extraordinary that a simple thing like human hair should be subject to such a complicated tangle of prejudice and disapproval and false assumptions. But then the whole human body is subject to just that. Accepting it for what it is seems to be a non-starter.

I guess the only people who can get away with any old hairstyle are celebrities like rock musicians, hospital patients and prisoners. Anyone else had better tread carefully.

PS: A wonderful quote I just came across: "Humans have a big cluster of dead keratin tendrils growing from our heads and we arrange them in different configurations and worry about whether other people find our keratin tendril arrangements aesthetically pleasing."