Daisy and Confucius

Lily and I are driving on a dual carriageway. A big overhead sign looms. DON'T PANIC WHILE DRIVING. Oh God! Should I be panicking? Is there something up ahead to panic about? Then I think of Franny - she often panics while driving and has to stop. What a nice, supportive, public service message, I think. Then we get closer and I see the message afresh. DON'T PHONE WHILE DRIVING.

We are listening to Classic FM. The bloke is going on about Delius and if there were one piece he would play that captures the wonderment of Delius, it would be On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

'That's good to remember,' I say to Lily. 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. And who was it by...?'

'Delia Smith.'

Leonardo, polymath and quintessential Renaissance Man, diagnosed with ADHD

Just doing a little research when make fascinating discovery.


Email Dan:


Hey guess what! Leonardo had ADHD!!!!

1. How often do you have trouble wrapping up the final details of a project, once the challenging parts have been done?

2. How often do you have difficulty getting things in order when you have to do a task that requires organization?

3. How often do you have problems remembering appointments or obligations?

4.When you have a task that requires a lot of thought, how often do you avoid or delay getting started?

5. How often do you fidget or squirm with your hands or feet when you have to sit down for a long time?

6. How often do you feel overly active and compelled to do things, like you were driven by a motor?

Dan emails back. 

It certainly seemed like it when he was in steerage....

By jove, she's got it!

Quintessential!

The Leonardo exhibition

'I went to see the Leonardo exhibition,' I tell Dan, who's driving home after buying a digital box. 'It's the hottest ticket in town.'

'I assume we're talking about di Caprio,' he says, deadpan.

I burst out laughing. 'I wonder what an exhibition on di Caprio would actually consist of?'

'A lock of hair, a pair of boots...' suggests Dan.

'The broken handcuffs from Titanic...'

'That bit would be interactive - you'd have to test your skill at bringing down the axe in just the right place so as not to chop off the out-of-work actor's hands.'

I'm warming to the idea. 'Maybe they could do a simulated flight over Beverly Hills where he crashed into all those houses when he was playing William Randolph Hearst or Hugh Heffner or Howard Hodgkin or whoever he was.'

'Speaking of which,' Dan says, 'I don't actually have Hodgkin's lymphoma, you'll be pleased to hear. But I can't remember the specific symptoms that after a lot of testing I didn't actually have.'

'That's nice,' I say. 'Anyway,'

'I think it was just a pain in the armpit.'

'...who was that bloke who was flying the plane?' I splutter.

'Douglas Bader?'

'No! In The Aviator.'

'Do you mean Howard Hughes?'

'Yes! Who exactly was Howard Hughes again?'

'The bloke di Caprio was playing when he crashed through the ceiling of that old bint's house.'

'Anyway, there'd have to be movie clips capturing those key moments...'

'Oh yes,' says Dan, 'they'd be the glue that held the exhibits together.'

You see, Dan and I could go into business together creating marvellous interactive exhibitions, as part of my portfolio of successful and fulfilling careers. Oh, except, Howard Hughes, who I'm just checking out online, said, 'Never have a partner.' And he was a billionaire. Mad reclusive, though.

'Anyway, the good news about the Leonardo was,' I say, trying to remember what it was about da Vinci that I thought was a good message to take home...

'They had his missing ear!'

I'm gasping for breath. 'No! The good news was, he was highly distractible, and hardly ever finished anything, so despite only...'

'So really that painting of him without an ear was just an unfinished painting?'

Oh God! My ribs hurt. 'So despite only completing a handful of works, he still went down in history as one of the most...'

'...prolific?'

I battle on. '...brilliant, seminal... influential... amazingly clever... I'm struggling here... peers of the realm... no, you know, Best Painters Of All Time. And the blueprint ... what is the word I want? Embryonic.... No...'

'Foundation?'

'Spearheading.... No. Archetypal! No. I nearly had it then. Forerunner. Oh God, what is it? The... the...  I'm trying to describe that he was the-one-that-began-it-all-and-encapsulates-it-all Renaissance Man.'

'Trouble is, by throwing all those words at me you've done my head in too. Didn't it say in the exhibition?'

'Probably.'

'Didn't he design the aeroplane that Howard Hughes crashed?' asks Dan before I can look up the exhibition booklet. 'As well as designing the theme tune for... it wasn't Civilization? Men at War. World at War. World at One. What was that programme?'

'Give me the tune.'

'It wasn't a tune! It was a man on a circle doing star jumps...'

'Hang on, hang on... yes, you're right, he did design that ... that...'

'...app?'

'No the... credits for...'

'...the credit crunch...'

'Oh God!' I'm weeping and I can't breathe. 'Please let my brain catch up!'

'Didn't he design a helicopter? I'm sure he designed a helicopter and then he went on to design an aeroplane that Howard Hughes crashed but he didn't quite finish it, that was the problem. He left out the landing gear...'

'World in Action!' I say, triumphant. 'It says here, the centrepiece of the World in Action theme tune...'

'It wasn't a tune!'

'...titles was Leonardo...'

'...di Caprio doing star jumps.'

Thank God. Dan's gone out of range. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Haaa. Deep sigh. Composure. Now, let's look at my Leonardo exhibition booklet. Oh. It doesn't say he was a Renaissance Man at all. It says he was a polymath.

Brazilian blowdry

'I just went past the hairdresser's,' says Cass. 'They're offering a Brazilian blowdry. Surely there's nothing left to dry if you have a Brazilian.'

'I wonder what a Brazilian blowdry is, then?' I ask. 'I'll look it up online.'

'No, don't do that!' urges Cass. 'You'll be bombarded with emails trying to sell you Brazilian blowdries. I'm for ever being offered downstairs cloakroom double sinks with an overflow and a swivel tap.'

'Is that a euphemism for someone in need of a Brazilian?' I ask.

Miss Dorothy Gray