I find that most of the news I view on television or read in the newspapers is remote from me. It is of passing interest because it doesn't directly involve me. Occasionally, something happens that brings a particular incident closer to home. I can recall five major examples of that happening to me.
One was in May, 1975, when my husband, daughter and I were on our way home from Aldeburgh to Stafford. We decided to take a break in Cambridge and revisit some of the places familiar to us from when we lived in Hertfordshire.
We parked the car on a road by the river, but our daughter was asleep in her seat in the back of the car and we didn't want to waken her, so I stayed with her while my husband went on through the park.
Shortly afterwards, I sensed someone watching me and I looked up quickly to see a face staring at me from the window of a moored boat, with the weirdest, most terrifying expression I'd ever seen. I was scared.
I couldn't lock my door from the inside so I quickly got out, locked the driver's door from the outside, and sat in the back, locked in with my child.
The man recognised he'd frightened me so he quickly drew the curtains and the thought flashed through my mind: "The Cambridge Rapist! That's him!" For a whole week I debated whether to tell the police, but everyone I mentioned it to said they'd think I was daft reporting that a man had stared at me and from that stare I knew it was the Cambridge Rapist.
Anyway, a week later the police found the rapist on a houseboat on the river where I had seen it. He was a local baker and his family didn't know about the boat. On board, the police found the evidence - the clothes he'd worn and the stocking masks and other items to link him to the rapes that had been terrorising the women of Cambridge for months.
Needless to say, I regretted not telling my story to the police a week earlier. Luckily, his next intended victim managed to escape and raise the alarm.
The second example of my involvement in a news item took place in a hotel in Dun Laoghaire in Ireland. The three of us had had dinner with friends in the Royal Marine Hotel and then sat chatting over coffee in the lounge. I hadn't noticed my small daughter wander off but she came running back, excitedly showing me a 50p coin.
"Where did you get that?" I asked crossly, angry more with myself for taking my eyes off her than with her for wandering off.
"From that man over there," she replied, pointing, and frightened of my anger, her face pale and tense.
I looked across and saw a man in a naval blazer, drinking on his own. I strode across to his table, flung the coin down and spat out the words: "Don't you dare ever again offer money to a little child without her parents' knowledge."
By now everyone was listening. What a carry on! Not what one would expect in a hotel like the Royal Marine!
As I stood there fuming with rage, I noticed the tears rolling down the man's cheeks. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean any harm. I just thought I'd give the child a bit of pleasure for there isn't any pleasure for me today. I'm drowning my sorrows for I've lost the dearest friend I've ever had, a real gentleman and a superb officer."
I was nonplussed. My anger dissolved and was replaced by compassion so I became the apologiser and offered a listening ear. The man was talking about Lord Mountbatten who had been his superior officer in Burma and that day the IRA had blown up the Mountbattens' boat in the West of Ireland and killed Lord Mountbatten and other members of his family.
As we were on holiday, we hadn't yet heard the awful news. That lone man in the hotel lounge ensured I felt the horror and sadness in a real sense.
Again, in August, 1976 we went to Dublin to look after a friend's house while she was on holiday in France with her family. The house was in the grounds of a public school.
On our first morning we were having breakfast with our friend when she was called on the school phone to go meet the new British Ambassador and his family, Sir Ewart and Lady Biggs and their two daughters. The older girl was to become a boarder at the school that September. My friend was house-mistress to the small number of girls in what had been an all-boys school.
Three days later we were taking our daughter to the Ambassador Cinema to see the film, The Slipper and the Rose. Around 10am. I was woken by some kind of loud noise. At 12 noon a friend rang asking if I'd heard about the IRA blowing up the Ambassador. I immediately thought of the cinema where we were due in three hours' time.
Visions of our being in the cinema when the explosion took place horrified me. It wasn't the cinema but the British Ambassador she was talking about. I couldn't take it in. The family had been with my friend three days earlier.
As the school was closed for the summer and as it was close to the Ambassador's residence, the Irish police searched the premises and they left a message for us to make sure we left everywhere locked up when we went out.
About 10 days later Lady Biggs rang asking for my friend but she was still in France. This tragedy affected us deeply. Until that Friday we had never heard of this family, yet three days later we felt that it was very close to home.
The next episode occurred in Wexford, again in Ireland. We were on a farmhouse holiday and had gone for an evening meal to the Talbot Hotel. We had to wait in the foyer until the Grill Room was free.
As we sat waiting, a group emerged and as one of them, a young boy, passed by, my daughter called out in a loud child's voice: "Mummy, why has that boy got only one leg?"
A young girl behind him took his arm and squeezed it as if to compensate for the child's remark. A short while later, a pager called out: "William Kennedy to the front desk, please."
A young man passed who looked just like the older famous Kennedy men. We discovered that the Kennedy clan were indeed staying in Wexford as young Teddy Kennedy had had his leg amputated because of cancer and his family had taken him to Ireland to help him come to terms with his tragedy.
Lastly, a seemingly trivial incident happened to me two years ago on the London Underground. I noticed a young man sidling up to me and watching my handbag. I quickly moved close to my companion, Geoff and switched my bag to the other side. Geoff had already noticed a woman closing in on me from the other side. Luckily, we spotted them in time. That evening we saw the woman again sitting in a café on Euston station.
I remembered the incident last week when the BBC costume designer was killed by a similar couple.
The incidents I have described illustrate how ordinary people can become involved in high-profile events. I am often reminded of John Donne's words: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to ask for whom the bell tolls.