Tuesday 14th February

I may be getting soft in my old age, who knows, but I keep finding myself on the verge of crying.  Tears keep welling up in my eyes over nothing.  On Sunday, at the news that Whitney Houston had died for instance; and I didn’t even like her.  People say she had a beautiful voice, but I am not sure, I never liked it; that awful hanging note on I will always love YOOOOOOOUUUUUU used to set my teeth on edge, the song was played to death on the radio at the time and I really grew to hate it.  And then the poor girl was such a mess, a drug addict, a selfish diva who squandered her talent and loved so unwisely.  But when the news came through that she had died in her bathtub I was in tears, to die floundering, slipping under the water, did she panic, or did she just slide under, in any case it must have been awful.  My heart just went out to her and I couldn’t stop crying.

Stupid that we can cry for those we don’t know at all; Princess Diana; John Lennon; Marilyn or Amy Winehouse, who whether they deserve our tears or not, seem to bring them out in a flood, while we sit stony faced and emotionless as news of yet another earthquake or tsunami comes on the news and the hundreds of dead pile up, or even worse those close to us sometimes leave us tearless; I never cried at Grandma’s funeral.

Is it this lachrymose weather, is it just mid-winter blues, is it just me in my mid-sixties, looking back at a life I could have, and really should have made more of.  Is it that despite being surrounded by friends who maybe do really care, I feel so bloody alone. I cannot even watch a nature film anymore, as the leopard lands on the impala’s back I look away, as the hawk tears flesh from a baby rabbit I have to change channels, and then we are into a press interview and a perfectly ordinary couple are appealing for help for a missing daughter, or just some silly drama on ITV, I am there crying my heart out for them.

But who am I really crying for, Whitney – no, not really.  The world and all its problems, not even that.  And you know tears of self-pity are the saddest tears of all.