A busy week...

...ended comfortably at Mother's yesterday evening with a glass of sherry, and supper, and an evening of sewing and chat and relaxation. We watched a video of the classic TV series All Gas and Gaiters. Remember it? You won't if you're under 40. It's set in an Anglican cathedral close, with Derek Nimmo as the Bishop's chaplain, and everything chintzy in a drawing-room-comedy sort of way, with the Dean as a humourless figure with a scary wife...all gently amusing. Golly, what an utterly different Britain it was in 1971. In retrospect it looks like an era of vanishing innocence. The collosal social changes of the late 60s - pop, pot, and the Pill - were just beginning to be fully assimilated in our culture. I remember older people disliking our denim jeans and pop music. But there was still a sense of people sharing a common set of assumptions and memories, a view of themselves and of one another, which made it possible to laugh at national institutions and human relationships in a way that would be impossible today.