The children never ring any more

It began during the pandemic. My husband was given a dollop of sourdough by a colleague, and it has lived with us ever since. It has a name. It has its own shelf in the fridge. It is fed more often than the cat.

I have nothing against bread. But when a man asks how the dough is “feeling” before he asks how I am, something has gone too far.

Am I alone in living in a three-way relationship, one third of which is yeast?

My son listens to everything at double speed. Books, lectures, even his girlfriend’s voice messages. He says he is “saving time”.

What will he do with all the time he saves? Listen to more things at double speed, of course.

I have calculated that at this rate he will have lived an entire life before forty. After that I suppose it gets boring.

I sat on the bus for half an hour and counted. Of twenty-two passengers, twenty were looking down at a phone. The twenty-first was asleep. The twenty-second was me.

We used to look out of the window. We saw the seasons, the cows and the neighbour’s new car. Now people know the weather in New York but not that it is raining on them.

I do not wish to be old and grumpy. But I want somebody to see the cows.