Trust in Constaninople and elsewhere.

Sledging in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Snow covers Britain with big freeze to continue into next week

Wintry weather brings disruption to airports, road and rail networks across the UK, with more snow and ice on the way

That's what it says in the papers here so I thought I'd put a picture to cheer up all my friends in Los Angeles.

Constantinople is a very long word; if you can't spell it you're a dunce. This is the first question kids ask each other in the playground but what they are really asking is - Constantinople is a very long word; if you can't spell it you're a dunce. Because that's the answer – IT!

I heard something strange the other day about this great city, which is now Istanbul of course, a woman there wanted to lock herself away and not see anybody at all for a while – she didn't want to see friends or relations, tradesmen or anybody else, whilst she concentrated on writing a book.

The first thing you ask yourself is how would she get her supplies? The answer, in this city of thirteen and half million, surprised me: she hung a basket out of her window, put some money in to it and a note of what she required. Tradesmen came along and put what she ordered into her basket, took the money and left the change. Then the girl pulled the basket up with the rope. In this way she could cut herself off completely from the outside world but I am amazed that in this day and age this could be done.

Many years ago we lived in a flat in Erdington which was really part of a large house – rooms, my mother called it. We didn't have a telephone so when we needed to use one we would go to the telephone box around the corner or use the one in a neighbour's flat – and we would pay for it.

It was a strange phenomenon in those days paying cash for the call – people would sometimes leave a little money box next to the phone with a slot in it for donations to the phone bill. 

When we moved to Shropshire, we had a telephone installed, and friends would come and use it if they had to make a long distance call; I was determined not to charge them as I thought it so petty. But they would insist and I could sometimes hear them say things like “I'll have to go – I'm paying for this call!” as if I was standing next to them with a stop watch.

In those days people would put their telephones in the hallway of their houses right next to the draughty front door – another thing we wouldn't do.

When we were leaving the flat I owed the neighbour ten shillings for phone calls – God knows where I must have called – so I left a ten shilling note in an envelope and pinned it to the wall near his door. I wrote a note on the envelope to say that ten shillings was inside - but somebody else took it. Ten shillings was half a pound, by the way.

So that's why I am refreshed by what happens in Istanbul. But I got to thinking that near my daughter's house in Suffolk they leave bundles of wood for the fire (kindling) and people leave the money and take the wood.

In Los Angeles at the entrance to Runyan Canyon bottles of water are left on a bench which people pay a dollar for and nobody steals either the water or the dollars They would sooner stick a gun in your face and rob you that way!!

Of course the last bit is a half joke. Strange place Los Angeles – gang members, drug dealers, muggers and the like, stand at the side of the street and will not risk a jay-walking ticket so they wait for the white crossing light to come on before crossing the road.

When the mail man comes to deliver the mail he also has to collect mail and people leave out going mail sticking out of letter boxes at the end of their gardens and nobody takes it – they trust that it will be left there for the mail man to collect.

Not me – I lost ten shillings once.