John Gibson: Barbara is still with us, you hear?
What comes of exposure to loud music most of her life, unprotected, no earplugs. I’ve known Dunfermline-born Barbara, 64, since she was a teenage civil servant in Register House, singing with a guitar round the Edinburgh folk clubs for two pounds and ten shillings a night.
The tinnitus is a bind. So bad in the left ear that she can’t hear the sound of a clock but she can still tune a guitar.
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Hide AdShe lives in Lincolnshire with husband Oliver Cookson, who specialises in studio management, and sons Colm and Gabriel.
“When I was pregnant with Colm,” Barbara recalls, “I said I have to be a candidate for a record – as the fattest woman from Dunfermline in history.”
Water waste
Coming from a tap near you, drinking water from recycled sewage. Don’t panic. It’s happened in England’s drought-ravaged south-east, long before it gets here.
Hard to swallow, yes, but Dr David Lloyd-Owen, who advises governments and corporate clients about water, isn’t joking when he tells us: “Sewage isn’t a problem, it’s a fantastic resource of embedded energy, nutrients and water.”
An acquired taste, I’m thinking. Shuddering.
Afterwords . .
. . .garbled by the sinking-fast Nick Clegg: “I believe we should be asking millonaire pensioners to perhaps make a little sacrifice on their free TV licence or their free bus passes.” Yes, Deputy Prime Minister, and that will of course include yourself, worth two million at the last count.