My parents' first son was born and died in 1946, their second in 1947 and I was born with the NHS in July 1948. Sometimes we take this amazing institution for granted but, to many people, the NHS was - and is - the difference between life and death.
Whichever way you slice it you have to accept that driving in this city of ours will never be a pleasure again.
I've become obsessive about the legalised highway robbery that allows clamping companies to immobilise vehicles and cart them off to some farm deep in the countryside where they are held to ransom just for the crime of parking for a few moments on private land.
I'm naturally inclined to support the police when they ask for a change in the law to enable them to do their job, but I have to admit to some pretty serious doubts about the proposal to increase the period in which a terrorist suspect can be held without charge from 28 days to 42.
THERE'S scarcely a day that passes without my giving thanks to a merciful and benevolent God for arranging for the two most contentious issues in the past five years of Ealing's life to have been planned outside the constituency of Ealing North.
HAVE you noticed that this year there hasn't been the plague of Christmas music being played in shops from early November?
THIS year Remembrance Sunday was actually on November 11. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month was marked, as usual, by a wreath laying and ceremony at the Greenford War Memorial and, if the past years are a guide, the parade organised by the Greenford Branch of the Royal British Legion (RBL) was even bigger and the best yet.
WHEN the children were young we went on family holidays to Cornwall but teenagers have different priorities so there was no enjoying the scenery from a static A30 this year.
