I’m not sure why they are so hostile to Camilla when she is far from being the only person who helped to drive apart Charles’s first marriage. The royal family prevented Charles from marrying Camilla in the 1970s, and his marriage to Di was later revealed to be “a sham from the outset”. It was not Camilla who induced Charles to embark on that marriage; it was the Queen and Prince Phillip. The marriage should never have happened in the first place, but that was in the time when marriages had to be “proper” and were meant to produce heirs rather than be about love. That’s not so much the case now that the unhappy marriages and public scandals these arrangements produce is well-known.

In an apparent sop to Lady Di’s fans, Camilla is known as Duchess of Cornwall (and not HRH or anything similar) rather than Princess of Wales, even though she actually has that title. When Charles becomes king, the rule is that Camilla automatically becomes queen, whether they crown her as such or not. There is the added complication of some believing that his marriage to a divorcée is illegitimate, but as such marriages are quite legal in most of the world and it is the king or queen, not their consort, who is governor of the Church, her position is not compromised, and it has already been established in Parliament that the marriage is not “morganatic”, i.e. she will become queen (given her age, there is no question of there being any children from this marriage).

Pretty much every time the question comes up, a stream of hostility to Camilla comes up on radio phone-ins, with someone saying they won’t ever recognise her as queen. To their minds, Di, “the queen of hearts”, will always be Charles’s rightful consort. Well, she’s dead and she isn’t coming back, and at the time she died, she wasn’t living a miserable life but rather enjoying her romance with Emad “Dodi” al-Fayed. Di’s death may have been a tragedy but it was an accident, and Camilla is no more to blame than Charles is. It’s not 1997 anymore, all you Lady Di fanatics out there. Get over it.

Way back, my Mum said that it was harder to get through a book if you don’t care what happens to the characters; as I recall, she was talking about the Jeanette Winterson book, Sexing the Cherry. Eastenders today is like that, and I remember that the last time I gave up on watching it, that was the reason as well. A large proportion of the characters, and certainly those who seemed to be dominating the stories last week, are either unpleasant or stupid, or both. This is particularly true of the younger characters. The story about how Phil Mitchell became a crackhead, after going to pieces when his daughter disappeared with her mother after he hit the bottle, has been widely denounced as preposterous and the Lucas/Denise story is right out of the Brookside book of ridiculous, sensational storylines.

What’s worse is the theme of pretty much every outsider turning out to be nasty or scheming — look at Adam Best, who seemed nice enough for most of the time he was in it, but then started offering Lucy Beale exam papers in return for sex (and thus cheating on his girlfriend Libby). Then there was Glenda and her son, whose scam on the Mitchells seemed to run for weeks and then peter out. Stacey’s friend Becca, from the psychiatric hospital, seemed vulnerable at first, but is now busy trying to turn Stacey Slater against her mother. (And the Slaters are the most miserable family ever invented.) The only really likeable character is Libby, but she’s a minor character and is getting written out of it later this year.

Well, next week they are running it five days a week (as opposed to four, most weeks) and the climax is set to be a big fire at the Vic, a climax of the current Phil-the-crackhead storyline. Meanwhile, Becca is set to “reveal her true colours in a shocking showdown with Stacey” and Ricky Butcher has to reveal that he may be the father of Sam’s baby. So, I’ll be watching bits of it up until that point (whether it’s on at 7:30pm or 8pm, that clashes with getting my food ready for the end of the fast) but I shouldn’t think I’ll bother with it after that.

Of course, you don’t have to use your real name; you can use a pseudonym and I’m sure many do. It just has to be a name.

I felt kind of sad that she felt the need to do this. Normally people would spent a lot of ‘neutral’ time together, having fun, not just giving or taking emotional support; however, since this woman has a painful medical condition, I expect there is less of that than with other people. I don’t pretend to know all the reasons why my friend may have chosen to end this friendship, but I do know that some people are better able to give others emotional support than others, something which is particularly true of men but also of some women. I can recall many times when I’ve been talking to people who have an emotional crisis of one sort or another and being at a loose end for something to say to them.

Sometimes, however, I’ve felt the urge to discontinue friendships, not because I found that they weren’t there for me when I needed them, but because they were rude or discourteous or didn’t have any time for me. There was one friend whose flat I used to go to who does a lot of work abroad (not sure what it all is but some of it is charity work), and it often happened when I visited him the phone would ring, he would pick it up and would talk to people in a foreign language for twenty minutes or more. Another time, I was with him and another Urdu-speaking friend and he told me that they would speak Urdu to each other, if I didn’t mind, and of course I was in no position to mind.

However, I actually never did cut it off with those two, although I’ve seen much less of them in recent years (one of them is no longer in the country). One of the reasons I had the urge to discourage the person I mentioned at the beginning from cutting “takey friend” off was that, after what seemed like a minor public disagreement over a political matter, someone apparently decided that they no longer wanted to be my friend after six years. This was someone I’d shared quite a lot with and vice versa, and I thought our friendship was stronger than that. I actually was not angry with that person, just a bit annoyed with something they’d written. I got quite depressed about it for a week or so afterwards. But you can choose your friends, but you can’t force them to choose you.

All because he failed to send an explanation to the speaker of Parliament.

Back when I was the chair of council in my student union (or ‘Guild’) in Aberystwyth, I had to deal with constant inquoracy, because people weren’t interested in attending. We couldn’t force some members, such as hall chairs who were given positions because they were chairs of hall committees which were independent of the union. But Guild Executive members, and some who were elected to council at the General Meetings, had to attend or they were stripped of their positions after three unexplained absences.

Well, the heads of two affiliated units (i.e. organisations with their own constitutions but which were paid out of union funcs), one of whom was a paid officer, didn’t attend council three meetings running. I made a fuss, but the executive wasn’t willing to lose people from such important positions for not turning up for something as trivial as council, even though the constitution said in black and white that this is what happened if someone didn’t attend three meetings running.

Of course, this guy was out of the country for a Commonwealth summit, a perfectly valid reason. These guys at my union were just lazy. But clearly, losing your seat and your job after failing to attend three meetings of a democratic assembly was not unique to my student union.

Last night, I had my “first” dream about me as a disabled person. It was scarily vivid. Law and Order style, I shouted to, well, whomever — faceless dream person; the police?? — that I would take care of this “dirtbag.” The next sensation I remember was the power and the support of my chair — so sweet, so responsive — as I hurled the dirtbag to the floor. They somehow got up again and, apparently, without resistance, because the next thing I remember was that I was hurling them to the ground again. It was a full body over-the-head lift that terminated in a satisfying crunch of bones on concrete. I did it again and again; I was murdering this person, but all I was tuned into was my chair: how sweet, how responsive. My wheels were just the best; I seemed not to care at all for the fact that I was killing someone for no reason that I could see.

Many hours later now, I still remember the feeling of surprise — me? killing someone? and satisfaction with my wheelchair.

How many of us have had vivid and bizarre dreams like that? I’ve had a few and most of them concern my education. Only once have they concerned religion, as far as I can remember. Once or twice, they’ve been about work, like the time I was driving a truck through a wood. The truck was much bigger than anything I’ve driven or am qualified to drive, an old continental-style big truck with a half-sized trailer (as opposed to a tractor unit with a full-size trailer, as is more common these days), was an ancient Fiat model (which I’ve never seen the inside of) and I got it stuck in the mud.

On another occasion, I went back to my old school and found that the building was now used by a good school and everyone was playing blissfully happily. A more recent dream (the night after my 29th birthday, as I’ve just discovered) had me standing on the platform at Ipswich station (which is where I travelled from when going home for weekends) when a train came down the fourth platform, used for regional stopping trains. It crashed through the buffers and basically punched a hole in the side of the station. Before long, the whole station was crashing down around me, and I was trying desperately to find a way out.

Later that day, a train did hit the buffers at Sudbury, in the same county. No major injuries, however.

The dream that haunted me most, though, was in 1993. I had finished at Kesgrave and was looking forward to starting at Coulsdon, my sixth-form college. I heard that the principal at Coulsdon had changed, and for some reason I felt disturbed by this. I don’t remember the full details of the dream, but it involved the principal being called by a name which, to me, had a derogatory meaning. As a result, I came to hate the guy without ever meeting him, and this was strengthened by hearing that he had expelled someone in my politics class for fighting (his friend said he was just defending himself), although I never saw the incident. I remember feeling surprised and somewhat unnerved by reading, in the student magazine, that his favourite song was one of mine (Carey by Joni Mitchell). But when I actually met him, he was very friendly to me.

Has anyone else had a strange dream with a far-reaching effect on them like this?

Number 3 is a perfect opportunity for a sister to pull a Towanda, don’t you think?

This time, it was a vegetarian one. (I sometimes add fish, usually tuna or anchovies.) Two medium-sized closed-cup mushrooms, 3 baby bell peppers (two orange and one red; it came in a bag of five and I used the other two last Saturday evening), and one clove of garlic. Plus half a jar of Sainsbury’s pizza topping, one ball of mozzarella and one pizza base; these came from Sainsbury’s as well, the bases coming in a foil packet of two. I prefer those because they are a little bit smaller than their fresh bases, and so you don’t have to spread the topping quite so thinly.

I put the tomato topping on the base, chop up my vegetables (I sometimes use olives and sometimes courgette/zucchini or even aubergine/eggplant rather than peppers, or sometimes as well as; you can get baby courgettes or you can get an ordinary one and cut about a third off it) and put the garlic and some of the vegetables on the topping. Then I get the ball of mozzarella, cut it into slices and then place them on top of the pizza so that it’s spread more or less evenly (you can also just tear the layers off it, as it’s very stringy). Then I arrange the remainder of the vegetables nicely on the top, and put it in the oven. Bake for 30 mins at 200C (gas mark 6).

The beasts were due to appear in court, charged with being sold illegally by the roadside.

The minister said many police had serious gaps in their knowledge and they would be sent for retraining.

Mr Nyamugabo was conducting a routine visit to the prison when, he said, he was astonished to discover not only humans, but a herd of goats crammed into a prison cell in the capital.

The goats’ owners were also charged, so the world hasn’t gone completely mad.

There was no word on what their punishment would have been, had they been found guilty.

I think the death penalty is in order here. Let them be lunch! (Or dinner, since it’s Ramadan.)

Katherine Ashenburg (author of a forthcoming book, Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing) on American toilets (sorry, bathrooms) and the various methods deployed to prevent people getting their hands soiled with germs - among them a device which sprays disinfectant on the doorknob and devices which spare the users the necessity of touching things like the taps and even the paper dispensers. As one who makes fairly frequent use of these things in London, I have to say that some of them are useful and some are plain stupid.

A month ago I made a post about stupid technology, including the twelve-step programme for setting the alarm on my new clock radio. Bathrooms are a focus for really stupid technology. Last week I had to make a visit to the “conveniences” at Waterloo station, which cost 20p (40 cents) a go. I discovered that the old lift-up mixer taps had been replaced by a new beam-activated tap. You know, you put your hands under the tap and it runs. Well, that’s the idea. In reality, it only runs if you put the palm or back of your hand under. If you put your fingers under, it stops. One of my favourite halal restaurants, Abu Zad in Shepherds’ Bush, has a similar device. Almost as bad are the “presta” taps which go off as soon, or almost as soon, as you release the tap - meaning that you cannot rub your hands together under the water. The reason for installing them is obvious - so that people cannot just turn them on and leave them to run, or worse, leave them on and deliberately block the sink. Why, though, cannot people set them properly so that you can run them for a few seconds, or get the vendor to set them?

The hand dryers at Waterloo are even more bizarre, apparently requiring you to put your hands into some narrow slit to activate the air. There is actually no shortage of types of hand dryer on the market, and a tiny number that actually work: the best known is the World Dryer by the Warner Howard company - the big white heavy one with the chunky round metal activator button. Virtually all the others don’t work. The air stream it issues is either lukewarm or too weak, or both, and if you put your hand under it for several seconds or half a minute, your hands will probably be just as wet as they were when you first started it. They are useless. Why do they exist? Do people test them before they spend money on them?

However, my biggest problem with toilets in general is plain bad design. When I wash my hands, I don’t want to rub them up against the fixtures and fittings or the side of the bowl, but most are actually too small for someone to get the palm of his (or perhaps her) hand in comfortably. The taps are sometimes so close to the bowl that you can’t wash bits of your hand properly at all (example: the wash taps at the Chicken Cottage in Tooting). Some plumbers set up the tap wrong, so that the hot water comes out first rather than the hot, so you have to choose between gushing water and boiling water. Then there are the pressure spray taps, which are another thing which just should not exist in a hand-washing basin; one often finds them putting out a spray which bounces off your hands onto your clothing (along with whatever you were trying to wash off) or an ineffective fine mist. The same question arises as with the weedy hand dryers: why do they exist? I have never seen one in anybody’s home, so why are they installed in public loos?

My final bugbear is the soap, specifically liquid soap. It doesn’t wash off. I have tried asking in various shops if they know of a liquid soap which washes off, just like normal soap, but none I’ve tried is as effective in washing off dirt as proper soap (important if you’ve been working in a dusty warehouse or handling goods which have been stored in one) and none of them wash off with a bit of water; they have to be rubbed off and then washed again. I do not want my hands moisturised when I just want to wash them; I can buy a moisturiser if that’s what I want. I hate the grimy deposit liquid soap leaves on my hands, and I can’t believe I am the only one, particularly given that liquid soap often includes glycerol, which is often derived from animal fat. I appreciate the need for soap which is not touched by everyone who passes by that bathroom, because you really don’t know what they are all carrying, but can nobody invent a liquid soap which is gone as soon as it has done its job?

People who know me know that I can be rather over-zealous about these things, but I am not the only Muslim (and I am sure there are others) I know of who does not like touching things one thinks might not be clean. I have even come across Muslims who will not sit on public seats because of others who do not clean themselves properly after using the bathroom (this is understandable but unjustified; touching something dry does not make anything dirty that was not dirty before and when something is not discernibly filthy or known to be contaminated, it is regarded as clean). The unfortunate fact is that a lot of people are at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to cleanliness, as one sometimes cannot help noticing, so while auto-spraying the doorknob periodically with disinfectant might be excessive, taking measures to save people from feeling that they have not quite left it all behind when they leave the bathroom is not.