When winter's dark days surge in and Christmas and Hogmanay are past January can gather round your shoulders like an old mac, worn out and frayed but still capable of keeping the worst of the weather out.

So it is today. To the medic at the crack of dawn to collect a month's supply of antibiotics for a too persistent kidney infection. Perhaps he should have given me a months supply last time not just a weeks.

Back to a lovely warm house and a morning spent trying to sort out a complex equation which involves moving brother and partner from Lancashire to Perthshire, furniture from friends castle to a pink shed (but who has the key?) and complaining to the local health authority that I seem to have been de-registered from our (only) local dentist. The details are unimportant, the whole dental service is in complete disarray, thanks to the late (hopefully) Mrs Thatcher, m.s.r.i.h.s.

We were going to venture to Perth this afternoon but other things intervened and anyway it decided to rain. Perth is a rather small little town which calls itself a city and it has the worst parking facilities for disabled people. Try pushing a wheelchair up a cobbled street! Perhaps tomorrow, weather permitting. Oh Joy. At least Perth has a decent bookshop and one passable Italian restaurant.

And tonight the wind blows and tomorrow is another day full of joyful news. Will they halt Bird Flu in Turkey? Who conspired against that sad Mr Kennedy? Was it Ming the Merciless? With Blair, Cameron, Campbell and soon Brown it looks like the clan wars are about to restart with a vengeance. Never trust a Campbell it is said, since it was the Campbells who carried out the Glencoe Massacre. Should we just save time and nuke Iran before they do it to us? These and other weighty matters occupy the mind, or what passes for one these days. Sometimes even George sounds sensible.