I HAVE seen red tape! In a government office. And guess what ­– it’s real. It is red, and it is tape. I thought it was just a name for the bungling ineptitude and nervous buck-passing that went on in the halls of power. But it isn’t a metaphor. It’s the genuine thing. They lash it round important documents. To make them look… well, important, I suppose. It doesn’t do anything else, except identify the documents that are going to be held up by bungling ineptitude and nervous buck-passing. Red tape is less efficient than a paper clip or a bulldog clip, a hole punch won’t work on it and…

MY sister-in-law has come to stay. She’s a bad influence. It is 10.50am and I still haven’t had breakfast. She’s like my wife. They’re sisters, so I suppose that’s not surprising. What’s surprising is that, if there are two children in a family, how come things aren’t organised so one talks and one listens? I’ve been dropping hints about the breakfast since 8.30am but no one listens. They talk. They talk through each other and at each other and if you tested them afterwards neither would have a clue what the other had said. And they certainly wouldn’t have a clue what I’ve said. I think they’d have trouble remembering…

I HAVE just received an e-mail from Barry Flint. I was at school with Barry. I know this because he tells me. Apparently my contact details are on a website detailing people who left school with me in 1961. He told me that, too. God knows how they got on this website, but I couldn’t resist a look. Sure enough, there’s my name: Left Chiswick Grammar School in 1961. Beverley Dine’s name is there, too, and John Collard’s, and their e-mail addresses. Buggered if I can remember Barry Flint though. It was a curious feeling, especially for someone like me who hasn’t been in touch with anyone from my school…

I HAVE started wearing sunglasses for the first time in my life. An inconsequential event, I hear you. Why are you telling us? Let me explain. They say the final indignity is death, but it’s not. The final indignity is the medical. Who invented these things? And surely there’s another way? At the family’s insistence I have been for a “full medical”. The phrase can make strong men tremble. Not just a medical, mark you, which involves a little random chest tapping and wrapping a crepe bandage round your arm and pumping it up. This is a full medical. If you are aged under 50 you may not understand the…

MORE accidents happen in the home than anywhere else, they say. That’s not exactly right. The precise wording is more accidents happen in my home than anywhere else. It’s a standard kind of place (walls, floors, roof) with standard appliances (toaster, cooker, vacuum cleaner). Where can it go wrong? With chestnuts, that’s where. It’s hardly a lethal weapon, is it, a chestnut? I mean, it’s winter, and chestnuts are a cold weather delicacy that should impart a sense of cosy bonhomie. You can’t kill people with them unless you shoot them from guns, or drop them from a great height. In a crate. Maybe not, but you can still do…