The nicest thing about deadlines is that when you miss them, they won't bother you again, unless there's a nag in the background ( like the government). That's also the worst thing about deadlines, missing them. So it's the end of a busy month and perhaps a few deadlines have slipped by. Oh dear.

When you're half a Luddite like me, and I won't say which half, we're bound to miss a few things unless we have an alert iPhone or iPad or whatever is the most effective watcher/alarmist. It would be lover-ly to have that at one's fingertips but my fingertips are clumsy. I keep losing passwords and addresses and I bog down trying to enter essential information into all these gorgeous, efficient time-savers on the market and in our homes now. But the technical equipment doesn't come with a Person to load in your co-ordinates and all the fiddly details that make your day work.

Years ago in Winnipeg when we were all young mothers with babies, I attended a mother-daughter party, without our children, a festive occasion, a girls' day off. One of our mothers commented on how efficient we all were without any help. One of my friends who had four children protested.

"Oh, but we have help," she said. "We have all these machine - washers and dryers - that do the work for us."

"My dear," said the older woman. "It's so much easier to say to someone (imperiously):

GO, and wash the clothes!"

Yup.