We now know, or anyway have been told, that to save the polar bear from fire and brimstone we must wash out our sardine cans, drink the tapwater, eat beans, turn off the standby lights and get on our bikes.

Le last Weekend in Paris for me coincided with the arrival of Velib – a ‘self-service bicycle transit system’. Throughout the city, ten thousand bikes are now tethered at 750 locations. They’re ugly cumbersome things - a cross between a moped and a walking frame – and their intrepid users look fearful for their lives as they wobble down the cobbles. Paris apparently has 371 kilometres of cycling lanes. For a euro you can buy a one-day Velib card, a weekly card for 5 or an annual one for 29. The first half hour’s then free and it’s an additional euro for every half hour after that. What you owe is on the bike’s meter when you thankfully return it to a parking stand.

Apparently the system’s worked well in Strasbourg, Rennes and La Rouchelle. Is it feasible for London? Somehow I doubt it and not just because here motorists hate cyclists, and taxi drivers view it as sport to mow them down. I suspect many Londoners might steal, vandalise, abuse and misuse these city bikes. There’d be bits of Velib adorning parlour walls like the antlers of stags. Lots of them would be dredged from the bed of the Thames. They’d provide under-the-kitchen-sink pipework for otherly qualified immigrant plumbers. Yobs would make a show of twisting them like liquorice to boast their macho strength. Naughty boys would vandalise their meters and scratch obscene imprecations about rival football clubs. It just wouldn’t work. There’s something wrong with us Londoners when it comes to shared property: supermarket trolleys, phone booths, trains, buses. We don’t love our city in the civic way Parisians seem to. Probably because it’s uglier, wildly expensive, uncohesive and unkind. Under the rule of law, we accommodate and tolerate but we don’t do sharing.

Mind you Parisians don’t do bike helmets. I don’t know what the projected accident figures are. By the end of the year they’ll apparently have 20,600 Velib bikes at 1,451 ranks. If each bike gets used 5 times a day that’s a lot of wobbling round the boulevards.

Reading my instructions for the Cheltenham Literature Festival this October, I remembered my last visit in 2001. On the train back to London, in a first class carriage (the publisher was paying), I sat alongside Nina Bawden and Austen Kark. It was their familiar way of travelling: they had senior railcards and were comfortably off. They spread their books and newspapers on the table between them. Their devotion to each other was easy to read. It was of the sort that decades of loving kindness brings.

He faced the engine. She was wearing red shoes with a pointed heel and black fishnet tights. Though in her seventies she was still beautiful. For some reason I mentioned the World Service as a boon for insomniacs. I hadn’t known that for years he’d been director of it. They spoke of their apartment in Nauplion and how she liked writing there. He showed me his book Attic in Greece. He’d endured bouts of hospital treatment – as had I. I foraged for teas from the buffet car. A running gag punctuated the journey - the inspector couldn’t work his ticket machine. He kept coming back and saying Maybe this time.

When I got home I ordered Nina Bawden’s novel Ruffian on the Stair. I thought of them both on and off. It had been one of those pleasant, life-enhancing encounters that make travel worthwhile.

The following year, on 10 May 2002 they got the 12.45 train to Cambridge from King’s Cross. They were going to a friend’s birthday party.

Next day, returning from Devon, I stopped for coffee on the A303 at a Little Chef. Part of the obligatory ghastliness was a free copy of the Daily Mail. I cried out when I read of his death and her serious injury in the train crash at Potters Bar. In my mind’s eye I saw them again - the comfortable carriage, newspapers and books spread between them, their loving familiarity.

Months later I heard Nina Bawden twice on radio news. She corrected the interviewer who spoke of her losing her husband. I didn’t lose my husband, she said. He was killed. In another interview I heard her say My husband was a conscientious man, he was killed by someone who was not conscientious.

I didn’t see David Hare’s play The Permanent Way about the privatisation of the railways. It was 75 per cent verbatim and Nina Bawden’s was the main voice in it. Nor have I read her book Dear Austen ‘a letter to my husband who was killed in the train crash at Potter’s Bar on 10 May 2002, to tell him what happened both then and afterwards…’ I’ll read them both when the sick feeling’s gone. I do wonder about it though – the elision between carelessness, incompetence, greed, immorality and crime. The unacceptable face of capitalism? Loose nuts on the points 2182A – and not only there it would seem. Insufficient maintenance, no proper inspection, no one at Jarvis taking responsibility. Not my job, cut the costs, up the profit, take the money and get home quick.

It took twelve hours to get from Cornwall to London last Saturday. Arriving early morning at Penzance, my friend and I were told there were no trains to Paddington. It was the rain at Reading. Come back tomorrow said a lugubrious man in blue. My friend was flying to Pisa on the tomorrow, so we decided not to believe what we didn’t want to hear.

Our disbelief proved right. After omelettes and hours of sitting with The Cornishman a train came. We didn’t know where it was going but we got on it. It collected the desperate from St Erth, St Austell, St Everywhere, and terminated, which is what trains do, at Plymouth. About a thousand of us then stood for ever on platform 7. At five-minute intervals a recorded voice said ‘This is an important announcement: smoking is not permitted anywhere on the station’. This was the only customer information. I am not a smoker, but what with the waiting and the not knowing, and the constant reference to it, I began to feel I could use a cigarette.

I talked to William, a nice man with a very large rucksack and a dog called Polly. She was from a rescue home and had a resigned air. William said she wasn’t very bright for a border collie, but that she’d enjoyed her holiday in Cornwall because the landlady at the B & B gave her an extra sausage for breakfast each morning.

William kept avidly texting and talking from behind his hand into some sort of smart phone. He was very knowledgeable about the railways, the evils of privatisation, the demerits of the various train companies, the state of the rolling stock and the track. Perhaps because I was interested in all he had to say, he confided he worked for First Great Western, but didn’t want the people on the platform to know. He feared violence. As he was clearly getting information from a train guru in a parallel universe I felt privileged to have won his confidence. Swathes of time passed. He texted and phoned then told me that in thirty minutes a Virgin train for Bristol would arrive, but that I shouldn’t get on it. I should wait for the 13.41 First Great Western to Paddington via Exeter. The 1400 advertised on the monitor wouldn’t happen, he explained. Station monitors were controlled from a central site and the operators, wherever and whoever they were, didn’t know what was happening where.

An announcement then came over the Public Address system. It was not about smoking. A train for Exeter was to arrive on platform 7. My friend and I decided to get on it whatever William said. We wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t Plymouth. The train headed in but stopped at the far end of the platform. It only had one carriage. I’d never seen a one-carriage train before. William explained its provenance, but my interest in railway history waned as I watched the panic scrum.

I asked him why rain at Reading should bring the whole network into chaos. He explained that the drains didn’t work. The pipes were full of roots. In the olden days this got sorted, but not now. And as rain was an act of God, train companies had no legal liability to sort things: no refunds, no alternative transport. Most real railway people had now gone, he said, trainees were now instructed by trainees.

The Virgin train came and went taking William and Polly. It was packed to capacity with people squashed in the aisles. My friend worried about our remaining on the platform, but I reassured her about the unadvertised 13.41. But then a train with two carriages arrived unannounced. It was pointing south and it put down roots on platform 7. My friend asked its driver where he was going and he said he didn’t know.

Our source of information switched from William to Hans’s father. Hans was from Vlaardingen in the Netherlands from where his father was texting information to him about the southwest network. He told him to avoid Bristol because there was nothing running between there and London.

Time passed, the 13.41 didn’t arrive, nor the advertised 1400. Hans said that in Vlaardingen railway travel was five times cheaper than here, trains always arrived on a designated platform, and that if a train was crowded people moved down the carriage to make room.

After an eternity another Virgin train pulled in on platform 8. It was going to Bristol. We scrambled aboard. It was packed to capacity. At Bristol there was a stampede to I didn’t know where. Down steps, up steps lugging cases. My friend told me to follow a man with a green suitcase. She said he was going to London. We squashed into a capacity packed departing train, commended our luck, bought much-needed wine from the buffet and listened to stories far worse than our own. A passenger from Truro told me a man in his compartment had been thrown off the train for smoking. I asked if those in charge had waited for a station stop before despatching him.

At Paddington no District, Circle, Hammersmith or Central line trains were running. I supposed it was the rain at Reading. I hope Hans got to Harwich in time for the midnight ferry. It is said that travel broadens the mind.

At the municipal pool a coterie of us, dawn dippers, wait summer and winter for the doors to open at seven – eight at the weekends.

We’re a disparate group, united only by this habit. Our swimming styles are as varied as our interests and I think we’ve evolved from different genuses of fish. Maureen was an ichthyosaur – the water displacement’s alarming as she plops into the pool; Abigail was a sand dab, has both eyes on the same side of her face and does what sand dabs do; Matt’s a cat shark, he undulates and we all get out of his way; Pauline’s not a fish at all, she walks not on but in the water and perhaps has mutated from homo sapiens.

I am a sardine. I instinctively give way to all larger beasts. Even their shadow makes me turn aside. It’s my mother’s fault of course. As a child, her powerful stroke inspired me with anxiety. I’ve an early forlorn recollection of her head on the sea’s horizon at Frinton as she appeared to be bunking off to Rotterdam. As a memento mori I’ve inherited the medal awarded her in 1926 by the Royal Lifesaving Society. Around its rim is their motto: ‘quemcunque miserum videris hominem scias: whomsoever you see in distress recognise in him a fellow man.’ On another Frinton occasion for no good reason she practised this black art on me. She snatched me from the gentle spume and dragged me out to sea. Most of the ocean went up my nose and I suspected attempted murder. These two events marred my development and I turned into a land crab until I was forty. Only then, with self-determination and fight back, did I evolve into a fish.

Though I’m a boring sardine, lacking in imagination or variety of stroke, I have stamina. I breathe eloquently and dart about, avoiding the big fish built to damage and devour. Strong swimmers hate the slow with ominous malevolence. The pool has ropes to rein them in but no net or ocean’s wide enough to contain their rage and spite.

I’ve learned the courage to join the fray. My presence goads, but I avoid. Up and down I go, and in and out. At first I tried counting the lengths, but found I cheated. Now I just keep at it for half an hour. The best time, as with most perverse behaviour, is when it’s over: a hot shower and unguents follow, and a perfect cup of coffee. If I miss this daily dice with death, my mood and energy level lower. Exhilaration at surviving it inspires my working day.

If it’s true that 150 thousand (or even up to 600 thousand) Iraqi civilians have been killed since the beginning of the US/UK invasion, that 40 per cent of the professional class have left the country, that one in three Iraqis now live in poverty, that 21 per cent of the children are chronically malnourished, that inflation runs at 50 per cent, that 70 per cent of Iraqis don’t have access to clean water, that the average number of daily hours of electricity in Baghdad is 6.5, that there are 2 million Iraqi refugees, that 96 per cent of Iraqi Sunnis think al Maliki’s not up to his job, that only 1 per cent of US/UK employees in Baghdad have a working knowledge of Arabic, … If all that’s true, then it does seem a bit rich to go on about those who come over here and threaten our way of life.

But here’s hoping Gordon Brown will be an enlightened public servant, build affordable houses, improve our health service, protect the vulnerable and shape this island into a model place to live. Pity about the multi-billion-pound arms’ trade though and no objection raised to all that stuff lobbed on Iraq: cruise missiles, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and God knows what.

By the Tate Modern at the south end of the wobbly bridge I talked for a minute about dogs with one of those ‘spare some change please homeless hungry’ young men. He was with a friendly mongrel, said he’d owned her since she was a few weeks old, she’d been the runt of the litter, they were never apart. Don’t know if it was true, I’ve heard that the dogs do the rounds, but she was a playful creature, brown and shapely, joking about with bone-shaped biscuits, a paid-up member of the human race. The young man had soft brown eyes, a Liverpool accent, matted hair, looked dangerously thin and yellow and as if he was about to die. I asked if it made him feel safer, having the dog. He said she hid behind him if there were altercations in the night.

An idea that lingers from David Mamet’s Edmond: that behind fear there’s a wish. Watching Edmond’s descent, spookily conveyed by William H. Macy in the film version, it seems a persuasive thought. Locked in a prison cell, with the world lost, Edmond seems to find acceptance and repose.

Then I thought of some character from a James Baldwin story who says there’s always further to fall, and another who somewhere in Herman Hesse says we have to go through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. Cheery musings as the rain clouds gather and the globe hots up.

I had my hair streaked today. I’d meant to take my digital camera to the hairdresser and ask Darren to photograph the process. A picture of me with my head in a mass of silver foil parcels would be of undoubted interest to bloggers worldwide. But I forgot it – the camera. Sitting under Fourth Floor’s hair cooker looking like – an accurate cliché – nothing on earth (see Jupiter Moon), the two things seemed related – having my hair streaked and forgetting the camera.

For I now forget a great deal. It’s because of my age, which I’m embarrassed to reveal. Forgetting’s become a feature of each day. It’s got worse than not remembering names, faces, any of the characters in Dickens’s novels, the capital of Kazakhstan*, or why I’ve opened the fridge door… I now don’t remember that I’ve forgotten what I’ve forgotten.

I suppose it will get worse. Soon I won’t remember where the fridge is. I’ll open the clothes cupboard and wonder where I’ve put the cheese. I suspect the very old have a sense of bewilderment about where they’ve left themselves.

I’m joining them. Even now I can’t quite find me. There was a time when it consoled me to remember the names of lovers. Recollections came tumbling back, Proustian evocations of place and season, sights and time. Now I can’t remember if I’ve ever had a relationship with anyone. I don’t think I have. Except with Roley of course.

Which takes me to the streaks in my hair. They are there to deceive myself. For I’m invisible when out, blonde or grey. If a passer-by’s looking at me it’s because I’ve forgotten some essential item of clothing, or am talking too loudly to myself. But I still want to look in the mirror and see what I once was, even though I can’t remember when or what that might have been. I know I weighed a stone less – then or once - had dark hair, ran up the stairs two at a time, but if that past self came running to meet me would I recognise her whoever she was and from wherever she came. I don’t think so. Just a strange visceral sense of having met that person somewhere. Once.

That picture of me on the About page – it was taken some years ago. I’ve never liked it as a photograph. I don’t think I ever looked like that. I looked more… well…. whatever, of course. Now, no picture of me reflects who I am. It’s the photographers, you know, and the cameras they use. They do no justice to the streaks in my hair – which were very expensive - £85 for a quarter of a head.

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* Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan. It was formerly called Akmola (also Aqmola) or even Akmolinski. Who needs a brain when they’ve got Google.

Territorial encroachment is a cause of war. Green wheelie bins abound in Cornwall. In Mousehole, a huddle of tiny cottages without sheds or yards, which when the sea was still a home to fish were lived in by fishermen, Monday is bin day.

A friend has a cottage there. Her wheelie bin’s time-honoured home is up against her flank wall by her coal hod. But since Mrs Pinkerton who lives in the Midlands bought ‘Caan Du’ opposite and renamed it ‘Fisherman’s Nook’ my friend’s wheelie bin has not been in its rightful place. In spite of protest, each time she goes to Mousehole it’s been moved. On her last visit with me the bin was up the alley and bright blue pots of busy lizzies were lined against her wall. We fought back, moved the pots, chained and padlocked the wheelie bin to the drainpipe and read Mrs P’s email in one breath:

I hope you don't mind me contacting you about this, I have just had an email from our caretaker about our cottage and one of the things she mentioned is your wheelie bin. She is concerned that your wheelie bin has recently been fastened with a chain and padlock to the drainpipe so it can't be moved for refuse collection. I don't know whether you were aware of this?

Out of courtesy to you, I have asked our caretaker to check every week if our visitors have put rubbish in your bin and to put it out for collection if it has been used and to return it after collection. Obviously she now cannot move it as she doesn't have a key for the padlock, so if any rubbish is deposited it will have to stay in the bin until someone who has a key can move it. I just hope that this does not create an environmental problem and I thought I had better let you know about this as soon as possible. In the meantime I'm just not sure what to do about rubbish placed in your bin. What are your thoughts about this?

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Dear Mrs Pinkerton

Your repeated moving of our green bin from the site it has always occupied has irritated us.

It butts against the side of our house beside our coal hod. That has been its site for the past ten years.

Now, each time we visit, we find it moved. When you compounded this by putting plant pots in its place against our wall we decided to buy a chain by way of deterrent.

It is a pity if you are unable to prevent your tenants putting rubbish in it for it has a large 54 painted on the lid. As for the environmental problem you say you fear, I suggest your cleaner removes rubbish put in our bin by your tenants and puts it in your own bin.

I have contributed to this conflict by giving poor strategic advice. Neither side shines. Prolonged negotiation should have been the preferred course. One of my unperformed plays (see Other Work), is called The Ditch is my Boundary. It’s a neighbourhood piece that ends in shoot-out from up a tree. Mrs Pinkerton is right to choose not to pursue this email exchange. I wonder where the offending bin will be when next I visit Mousehole.

That line I didn’t write that’s on the imprint page of my books: ‘Diana Souhami asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work’ – it sounds odd, sort of defensive and aggressive.

Of course there are issues to do with ‘intellectual property’, plagiarism and copyright law behind this assertion made on my behalf. The struggle for ownership control of words images and music is not going well for those on the high moral ground. Attempts to stop copyright misuse often seem silly - like that exhortation on cinema screens for us to snitch on anyone we see downloading the movie to their ipod. What might follow? A citizen’s arrest of a Shrek goon by the usherette. The goon’s thirteenth caution, a fine, six months in prison.

It seems there’s an unbridgeable gap between copyright and the ‘digital environment’. From this web page zillions of people worldwide may at this moment be downloading multiple copies of excerpts of my works and lavishly distributing them for impermissible use. And if I Google my name in that solipsistic anxious way (do lots of authors with fragile identities do this) and go into Images, among pictures of me and my book jackets there’s a Guidebook for Lesbian Parents, a woman’s bottom captioned Diana Swimwear, a violet-grower by the name of Richard Battenfield and publications by sundry Souhamis most of whom are anxious not to be related to me. Anarchy rules. I assert the moral right not to be identified as the author of these works.

Meanwhile with all this free flow of words authors get poorer by the hour. According to research commissioned by the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society and carried out by the University of Bournemouth, the average income of a UK author is one-third below the national average wage. Only one in five makes their living just by writing….But even so I’m on the side of anarchy. I’m far more anxious about the consequences of infringing some ferocious individual’s copyright than protecting my own stuff. I’m not going to assert I don’t want that peculiar pompous sentence asserted because I don’t want to be worse off than I am, but I view it as an ineffectual paper dart.