DON’T IGNORE THE Bs, DEAR

"Some Bs in windmill, dear. Don’t ignore." No suggestion of profanity, no, no! It is merely an example of Auntie Dot’s rather special kind of shorthand which one finds in the welcoming and instructive little notes dashed off on the spur of the moment and left dotted about her pleasant seaside home, which she is in the agreeable habit of lending to her friends (myself being one of them) when she goes "gadding".

The fact that Auntie Dot is well over eighty doesn’t stop her from gadding, in other words from keeping in touch with her numerous relatives, friends and dependants. Hence the notes, which are Auntie Dot’s equivalent of all the things she would impart to her guests (for she is a great talker) were she there in the flesh to receive them.

But, as all her correspondents know, being a whirlwind of energy and having so much to say, she has the habit of abbreviating words, in fact sometimes of only putting the first letter and leaving the rest to chance. So on arrival at the flat, my first job is to go about gathering up these little

missives almost as one gathers bunches of wild flowers. One from under Cousin Clarence, one from the dresser top, quite a few here and there in the kitchen area and so on, after which I settle down to decipher them.

Some are dead easy. For example, "Plenty of HW, dear . . . don’t stint." Child’s play, that, especially seeing where it was found -- stuck up behind the bath taps.

"Ed on GR bed may not be adequate -- do be cosy" could strike a slightly questionable note if one didn’t know Auntie D. and her strict ideas on morality, and one very soon realises that "Ed" is a hasty abbreviation of "eiderdown" and she is only urging her guests to help themselves to further covers if necessary. "GR" one already recognises as shorthand for guest room.

But I must say that the "Bs in windmill" stumped me for a while. Could she mean real live bees? If so her injunction to "not ignore" I should certainly disobey because I’m scared stiff of those good industrious creatures. And what about the "windmill"? Where does that come in I ask you? Hadn’t a clue, but thought idly that if a colony of bees had decided to live in one, well, good luck to them, I’d say.

Thus I went on, pondering, until one day the whole conundrum resolved itself into a cosy domestic solution. I cam by chance on a large round tin which had a brightly

painted windmill on its lid -- Ahhh! Things rattled about inside it . . . and sure enough, after wrenching off the lid, there they were, about a dozen chocolate shortbread biscuits.

No doubt the dear old girl in her hasty and somewhat eccentric way had got into the habit of calling that tin "the windmill tin" or sometimes for the sake of brevity just "the windmill" to distinguish it from all her other cake and biscuit containers (but how was one to know, dear Auntie Dot, for crying out loud?). The rest was easy. "Don’t ignore" meant "Get stuck into them," only she was too lady-like to put it so vulgarly.

"We must communicate," says Auntie Dot, and this she certainly does in her own inimitable way and so of course do we all. If we didn’t we should become zombies, living within our own private worlds, incapable of being reached, unmoved by ecstasy, pity or anger.

When the old pensioner trots along to the corner shop, it is as much to make contact with another human being as to make his or her purchases. When our sense of humour is tickled and we find an equal response in the eye of a stranger, when we wave a greeting, applaud an act, pat a dog, hug a child, pray, we are "at it" -- communicating, just as we are when we lose our tempers, grumble about our lot, get something off our chests, shout, weep, and gnash

our teeth. Lord forbid that we should live in a world of non-critical, agreeable, smiling saints (what a bore if we did) and though to love everyone may seem well night impossible, to be aware, to respond, is not only possible -- it’s the stuff of the human heart.

In other words, "only connect", as E. M. Forster says, "only connect."