The Cut Price Hero is a man or woman who tells you, in proud and slightly hushed tones: ‘Last year, I bought my mother’s council house for her.’

Let’s stop there for a moment. How wonderful, you are meant to think, that this person has pulled themselves up from such humble beginnings to such levels of success that they are able to pay for their maw’s security in the form of an entire property. See: any number of footballers, pop stars, and, I seem to remember, a lawyer of my ex-acquaintance. Cockles warm enough yet?

Look again. They think themselves terribly clever for doing this, as of course their mum’s house would have been available at a great discount, thanks to the Tories’ right-to-buy scheme that squats immovably in the middle of public life like a dropsical Godzilla.

But if these people really were the caring souls they wish to appear, they would have bought their mum a nicer house from a mainstream outlet, meaning she could put her original home back into the council reserves, thus enabling an overcrowded family who has spent years in temporary accommodation to have somewhere decent to live.

But we don’t think like that, do we?

I really should be on Grumpy Old Women.

However, after my experience the other day, I wonder if that’s a good idea. People really are funny.

I’d been in Kentish Town, and decided to walk part of the way home. When I got to Adelaide Road, I felt too hot and tired to go on, and decided to wait for the 31 bus. When I got on, I was pleased to find an empty seat at the front, in the ‘Please give these seats to disabled people and those with children’ seats. (I don’t have the phrase to hand, but will try and find it.) I flopped gratefully into one of the two free seats, my stick folded up in my bag.

A couple of stops later, an Irish woman in her 50s got on, and an old white-haired lady who she seemed to be accompanying. Perhaps it was her mother, who knows. I glanced up, and figured that if the old lady needed to sit down, she could take the seat next to me. The older Asian couple in the seats behind got up and said they were getting off at the next stop, so the two women ended up sitting together.

But this was clearly not good enough for madam. She began a rumbling bitching session about ‘her’ in the seat in front, addressing the back of my head, and how awful it was, and how those seats were ‘actually supposed to be for old people,’ and yadda yadda, all of which I ignored because in truth I did not have the energy for a confrontation. When we got to my stop, there was more muttering and an evil glare.

It got me thinking. What on earth are all the people with cancer, heart disease, Crohns, or emphysema (to name a random sample), or recovering from strokes, supposed to do, in order to signal to all the self-righteous bullies on public transport, that although they are not limping or in a wheelchair, they are in fact quite ill and could do with a bloody seat?

Not sure why this got to me, in the same way as the receptionist at the anticoagulation clinic managed to do last week. Looking back, I wish I’d given them both, separately, a mouthful, I really do, just to restore the natural balance of things, but I was just too tired. And, of course, two wrongs don’t make a right.

I’m hoping to post more on here but, post-hospital, I’ve got all sorts of things to sort out; things that, although technically only take a couple of hours, seem to use up the whole day.

I could rant about my relationship with Vodafone, or the price of the iPhone, or the fact that it’s not the needle-sticking that’s bugging me about all the blood tests I’m having, but tearing the tape off my arm later. Oh ow and whine. In fact, I do have a couple of rants up my sleeve, but I’m feeling a bit mellow, in the enforced way of convalescence, and am waiting for the next blood-pressure raising piece of vicious stupidity to appear in the paper to kick me off again.

Actually, strike that for the moment. With all the troubles in the world, I would rather think about kittens.