RED, WHITE, BLUE AND GOLDEN

So the Intrepids were back for a day and have disappeared again, this time, back up the M6 to Cheshire for a golden wedding. I'm on my own again until Monday.

It was odd watching the Last Night of the Proms on my own. I've always thought that if ever I lived abroad, every night would feel like Last Night of the Proms. A surge of patriotic, Queen-saluting, Union-Flag-waving pride ripples through me to the strain of Rule Britannia or Jerusalem. Once again as God makes 'mightier' this 'land of hope and glory' I find myself irrepressibly proud to be British. Cut me open and my blood flows not only red, but white and blue with the nobility of this sceptred isle. So I'd like to think anyway.

Normally, the Intrepids are here to watch it and comment on the crowd: who looks like whom and how much bigger the Royal Albert Hall is in real life and what those mushroom things are for (though we all know what those mushrooms things are for). Tonight it was just me and a bottle of elderflower cordial and lemonade.

I don't know whose golden wedding it is. Whenever I hear about such things I feel like asking a million personal questions; I'd be the same if I met someone who had climbed Everest or had been chosen to go into space. I'd want to know everything: how you got there, how hard were the really difficult bits, did you ever feel overwhelmed, how did you get through without killing each other, that kind of thing - but it's tough to ask older people such questions without it coming across as impertinent or disrespectful, especially at the event celebrating such a magnificent achievement. You've got to respect older people, I think.

I'd like to go one day, stand there with a plastic flag and bob up and down with the rest of them. Actually, I think I'd prefer a box - and we did sit in a box for that Christmas singalong last year - that way there'd be a shelf for the elderflower cordial and comfortable chairs to relax into while the oboist is playing There's No Place Like Home and everyone is humming along. Plus I could sit there for some time while everyone else races for the tube.

As it was, I sitting on my own in the conservatory with the iPad, reflecting on the fact that I quite like being on my own. I don't know that I could do it for fifty years though - I would definitely want some sort of party if I managed it. Plus, I'd want all the young people to ask me how I managed all those years alone without going crazy. Though I'm not convinced anyone would believe it, even now.