As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:
I occasionally walk into glass doors. In one Nailsea church they open automatically to enter. But you have to press a button to leave. Clever. Stops children escaping. The price is a sore nose for the old and stupid such as me.
At Gloucester Services recently I noticed an older gentleman cursing that his hand drier wasn't working. Because he was holding his hands over a stainless steel waste-bin. Being generous, it looked a bit like the hand-driers of a few years back. He had not recognised the sleek air-blade driers on the wall. I gently assisted him without making him look a fool. After all, that will be me in a few years' time. If I haven't knocked myself senseless on doors.
I am delighted that justice appears to have been done for the family of Melanie Road, a teenager murdered in 1984. Her killer, Christopher Hampton, pleaded guilty after DNA evidence linked him to the crime. Hampton, now 64, will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.
In 1984 we were a decade from mobile phones being commonplace. No-one could have foreseen then that this unsolved murder would eventually be concluded with a swab from the mouth of Hampton's daughter in respect of an unrelated matter. We get cross with progress but forget what benefits it brings.
Take away those years of technology and a wise biblical author once wrote that we do not know what tomorrow might bring. We don't. But they added that we should not worry about it. Well, not if we are living innocently and righteously. But if you left DNA evidence at a crime scene 30 years ago it might be appropriate to be worried right now.
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