Never give your daughter hard lenses Mrs Worthington:

Honestly there is nothing like the faint, yet unforgiving, tinny ‘tut’ of a Gas Permeable as it hits a surface somewhere nearby, languishing in a place that its bleary eyed owner can neither see nor move toward. At that very moment of acknowledgement, when Kelly’s Eye is all that there is and all you can do is stand stock still proclaiming for all you are worth.
Years ago when this happened and I was perhaps slightly worse for wear I might find myself shouting “Alice, Alice, AH—LICE-UH, you’ve got good eyes come and help me find this lens, It’s popped out and I am blind and drunk, but don’t move your feet when you are within the pinging distance’
My dear friend Alice has been through this ceremony with me many a time and almost every time has declared ‘yes I’ve got brilliant eyes, I find lost stuff all of the time, I’m known for it, let me find my lighter’
So I, as the lens wearer am there patting myself down in the hope that the errant ocular add-on might be caught somewhere in my jerkin (it is probably a Monday night, 2007, mid December in a freezing cold bathroom, around 3.42 am and the guilt as well as the rot is setting in), waiting for my partner in crime to hover into the bathroom in case she crushes the lens and then all will be lost ‘Don’t let the dog in, the dog don’t let it in, he might lick it and then that’s £80 down the drain and these lenses are still on tick to Mr Shah’
So, tonight just as I am coming to terms with my midweek middle aged self I misjudge the placing of the second lens into its little pot and there it is, that sound, that brittle boned clatter as the dry eyed dread sets in. I start patting down, feet still as an unmade man waiting to become part of Brooklyn Bridge, bending the bedside lamp towards the concrete floor, only to highlight the chunks of broken glass from a misdemeanour made many months ago ‘Oh God, that’s where the dog hides, he could have…’ Still no sign of the lens, for that is what we are searching for, then I remember that I have a mobile phone, with a torch, at the same time racing through my mind is the comfort in knowing that my glasses have two arms and are not held together by sellotape, so I could leave the house and at a push not fall over.
The torch sweeps under my bed, over my ‘dressing table’ (in reality a chest of drawers that I found outside The Conqueror years ago, when Steve and Sheila wore lampshades for hats and were the King and Queen of Shoreditch), when I spy that fragile disc sitting there drying like a piece of corral, ever more brittle with each passing second. All of a sudden my feet become unstuck as I place in its pot, squirt the fluid and close the lid.
I live to see another day.
Dedicated to Alice Urquhart

I was just heading down along Mare Street to my friendly local stationery shop when I saw a young woman ahead of me sporting a blue plaster cast that reached from her toes to her knee. She was struggling along on her crutches and carrying a shopping bag. I asked if she would like me to carry her bag and with a sigh replied ‘Yes please’. I explained that I knew how it felt and all that, when I asked her if she had any children ‘No children, no husband, no papers’, so felt all alone.
She was on her way back from the Red Cross in Dalston, where she was given a bag full of toiletries and we both had a bit of a laugh because with that plaster she can’t have a shower, so as well as the loneliness and the pain she feels grubby because she cant have a proper wash. She only had enough money for one bus journey so had to walk the second leg.
Mimi (that’s her name), came over illegally from France with her friend to seek asylum, fleeing from Eritrea. Her friend, fortunately has a small flat and she is staying there while she is unwell, but basically she is homeless, jobless and worried. Today the Red Cross have put her in touch with a solicitor who hopefully will help her. I walked her to her front door whereupon she asked me to come in for a cuppa, which I declined due to the fact that I was on my way somewhere else. Someone with nothing offering what she had, what a lovely thing.
The reason I am telling you this is to say that if you see someone struggling with a bag or anything else, whether it is a man or a woman, old or young, give them a hand it makes you both feel happy and the world a better place.