Sandra Chapman: Putin isn’t worried about our rocketing household bills

The final depressing slap came with the news that the Taliban were gradually forcing women out of jobs and education in Afghanistan. Back to the kitchen for them, sadly.

I wonder where the next generation of males will come from for soldiering in the country. Surely they won’t expect their women to produce them?

One big headline said it all in this week of upheaval: ‘Britain really isn’t working and the NHS is to blame’. I suppose the latter is a problem but I blame the Russians and their unforgiveable antics in Ukraine.

Putin started the oil crisis and his gung-ho efforts to steal territory which doesn’t belong to him are causing chaos around the world. How important he must feel with all the power he is displaying. What about tourism in his country? Anyone been to Russia this year on holiday? I thought not.

The very thought of household bills rising in the UK by £6,000 this winter, the result of Putin’s greed for territory, means holidays go out the window for many of us.

Those of us who’ve enjoyed taking our children and grandchildren to a Christmas Pantomime in the Opera House for example may find it a luxury they cannot afford this year. Not even new lights for the Christmas tree may be affordable.

I suspect, like many other couples in this situation, we sit down occasionally and work out where we are going in all this upheaval. How do we heat our old-style house this winter, for example? What radiators can we do without and, yes, what we believed to be a necessary outdoor light above the front door is a luxury we can do without.

Do we need daily newspapers? Of course we do. How are we going to keep up with what Putin is doing to if we don’t? Couldn’t we cut the supermarket visits down to one and not two and no, we can’t possibly do without our wood burning stove. Nor can Himself do without his favourite whisky and yes we certainly do need some bottles of wine in the cupboard for visitors calling.

The winter holiday is a non-starter but the grand-daughter’s birthday in the Netherlands is a must. She’s already talking about it. I would go hungry before I would miss that.

And there will be no skimping on their Christmas presents. The wider family might be lucky if they get a Happy Christmas phone call instead of a present from us on the big day. Maybe it’s as well we all cut back for the festive season? It’s getting out of hand. Surely we haven’t lost our thrift skills?

The parenting website Mumsnet reveals that more than 1,000 users of the site say they are more likely to buy gifts that people need rather than want this year while those who normally donate to food banks over the festive period can ‘no longer afford to do so’.

Other families with pets are worried about the rising costs of feeding them. When I was very young my uncle had a collie dog on the farm. It was just a small farm and what he earned from it supplemented his small income from the Ulsterbus company.

The dog never went hungry. Boiled potatoes with home-made butter was his daily food with fish and meat when the family were having it. The fish came from the local Moyola River and Lough Neagh.

The people of Ukraine will not have much of a Christmas this year, I suspect, but you can bet Putin will be lapping it up in his usual luxury while his unfortunate soldiers do the dirty work for him, many of them dying in the effort.

This week we’ve had a visit from contenders for the Conservative Party leadership Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. This political farce too is out of place in such difficult times. I will be glad to see the back of them.

Humans are not the only ones who suffer from dementia

Is our exceptional summer over for good? I’ve never been much of a sun worshipper but even I am missing that warmth from the sun as you step out the door even if its’s only to go to my little vegetable patch which picked up wonderfully after a cold start earlier in the spring.

Gardening has been a pleasure – well, almost – now that my leg is working again after two disasters, either of which could have crippled me. I don’t operate the lawnmower – I’m not a machine person, haven’t a clue how they work - but I can get rid of weeds.

Occasionally I read in the newspapers about how to ‘stave off dementia’ or ‘keep socially fit in old age’. Not sure what the latter is supposed to be but dementia is a big problem for the elderly though it never appeared in either of the families my parents were part of. I read this week that listening to the radio ‘is better at warding off dementia than physical exercise’, according to one study.

In another article I read that deer move in smaller social circles as they get older. In fact the study conducted by Oxford University over a 50-year period revealed that deer ‘become picky about their social circles as they get older and prefer their own company to being in a large group’.

Now that is interesting. They even prefer to live in isolated locations and ‘engage with fewer other deer within these sparser areas’. Five years ago we moved from an isolated area to a built up area where we still live. It transformed us socially but Himself’s memory is better than mine. I’m working on mine through home spun mental challenges.