It's a losing battle, of course, the struggle to maintain a certain level of language and grammar. We've lost the fight for lie. Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, was the title to a grammar guide a few years ago but it was already too late. I blame the child's prayer and Dylan for the compounded error. "Now I lay me down to sleep," it goes and people kept the Lay without realizing it has an object - me - who, which, that is being laid down. And Dylan sang "Lay, lady, lay" being another kind of lay, but people liked the sound of it, I suppose. Remember that line of Dorothy Parker's about some slut she knew: " If all the people she knew were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

. So you shout at your kids every night to lay down and perpetuate the mistake, drilled forever into their beds. Well, of course, no one knows the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs any more, so why would they care? I do. It hurts.

"Life is so daily," said a character in one of my plays, "why can't I get used to it?" It's not the slings and arrows, the unlooked-for but always present onslaughts of living, it's the inexorable routine. It keeps surprising me, even after all these years. Not surprise, of course. Remember Webster's correction of Mrs. Webster when she caught him kissing the maid. Mrs. Webster said, "Mr. Webster, I am surprised." "No, my dear," said Mr. Webster, I am surprised. You are astonished." Yes, well, I am astonished every time I discover that my plants need watering, and in these dry winter days it's every day, like daily. And I don't welcome the daily chore of swallowing a one-a-day or a D-drop vitamin or calcium or whatever. I mean, daily! It's too much. Daily routine is so tedious but also necessary. We make enough decisions every day. I guess it's nice that some decisions are taken away from us by regular routine and we perform an action without thinking about it. It still takes getting used to. Am I going to get used to writing a blog every day?