It’s an encouraging sign as to how far we’ve come that, before I had the MRI last week, the technician asked me in all seriousness whether I was a sheet-metal worker. I raised myself up to my full 5 foot one and declared that I wasn’t.

Just out of interest, I’ve looked up the statistics and apparently 9% of sheet metal workers in the UK are women, which is actually more than I’d guessed. They must be pretty brave souls, forging their way in an overwhelmingly male world. I remember with some shame how, forty years ago, I bottled out of doing Physics A-Level when it turned out that I was one of only two girls in the class. It wasn’t that I was hassled in any way; I just felt very, very uncomfortable and – at sixteen – didn’t have the … guts to stick it out.

I nearly used another expression there, but my mother reads this blog. Although, it would have been a particularly apt one.

***

Fred, who I tutor for GCSE English, tells me that they’ve started studying ‘An Inspector Calls’.
“Have you read it yet?” I ask.
“No, but we’ve watched Titanic.”

***

I find myself complaining about having to go all the way to the bathroom to get drinking water, because of our kitchen refit. Then see a trailer for Red Nose Day and feel thoroughly ashamed of myself.