Eye life

Cover: NHS crisis deepens
Theresa May (inspecting ward): Tell me straight, how long have I got?
Patient: You won’t last the winter, dear.

Flying back from Norway, Private Eye keeps me enraged and chortling, by turns. I doze. I listen to Natasha Raskin Sharp and Melvyn Bragg. I change planes in Heathrow.

Back in Edinburgh, my car battery is flat. At first it looks like I won’t even be able to get into the car, it has been so long since I used the key to unlock the door that the mechanism is seized. Eventually it turns.

I get a passing motorist to help jumpstart the car, to no avail. I call the breakdown service and wait half an hour for the numpty wagon to turn up.

Angus and I eat a thali at Annakut - great as always. Good conversation - books, philosophy, aikido. Then we apply for uni funding, discover (again) that applications for accommodation aren’t open yet, transfer money.

I stop in at Nick’s. He has social workers in four times a day to help with his ma, but he’s still on 24 hour care duty. He could do with a break, but I can’t help. I have to get home, for just one night.

I park in Castlecraig - our track is impassable - and walk home through the snow. I go straight to bed, without even lighting the fire.