Three teenage boys have been brought back from Turkey apparently on their way to join ISIS – and they were promptly arrested ‘on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.’

Three teenage girls who travelled through Turkey to Syria were told (via our media) they were not in any trouble as they hadn’t done anything wrong.

Neither had the boys – they hadn’t got that far.

So what they needed was to be told they were not in trouble, to go home to Mum and Dad. Someone sensible should have explained what it would mean to go into a situation like ISIS and Syria and to say, ‘We understand why you want to go there, but wait and think about it, and we really don’t want you to die, so go home.’

And then they, one of the boys, might say,’ Hang on a minute, you, the British authority, have been saying Assad is brutal, nasty and he needs to be got rid of, but thousands of people have died, and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes, been ‘displaced’, and you have still done not much, so I went to make a difference. I went to stand up for people who are suffering. I know ISIS are not the best of people, but you aren’t either. You are all talk, and then not much action, and now not even any action.’

And then they, one of the boys, says,’ What about that man who went to fight with the Peshmerga. No one said he should have been brought home and arrested. He was fighting Assad but fighting with people you like at the moment. Who knows who you will like next week. After all, Assad is now, not exactly a friend, but not top of the wanted list.’

And the sensible person would say,’ It is all complicated. The world is complicated and foreign affairs are more than complicated. But, there are better ways to change the world than fighting for ISIS. Stay home, and fight for this government, your government to change. Not, I have to say, to be even more Islamic or to adopt Sharia law because we don’t have that here – and if you really, really want that then you need to go live somewhere where that is the deal. But why not stay here and fight for a foreign policy which is not so fickle and not so full of hypocrisy.

And then one of the boys would say,’Why are the girls who left a couple of weeks ago told they are not in trouble if they come home. Why is it said they were groomed online but  we are presumed to have sought out radicalisation? I did get stuff online but everyone does, and those girls must have.’

And the sensible person would say,’ Well it is probably because we think they will just be cooking and cleaning and there to be married off for sex, because that is how we think of women in any Muslim society, let alone a ‘radical state’. We think they are victims, but we think you are not. You are going to end up like Jihadi John. And that might be where we really divide because if you do think Jihadi John is a good person, we really do have to divide.’

And then one of the boys would say,’ What about all the stuff you do behind closed doors. Guantanamo Bay, all the renditions and all the rest.’

And he would say,’ How come it is described as a war crime to bulldoze some ancient sites but not a war crime for hundreds of thousands of people to be bombed out of their homes and have their children killed?’

And the sensible person would say,’ Quite right. No one should be beheaded, no one should be spirited away, children in Syria and Palestine should not be killed, ancient sites are important, but so are people, and we should all be much nicer across the world. But we are not, and all I want for you is to take you home and hope, really hope, that you will change the world. You might be surprised to find that there are people here,including middle aged white women living in the countryside who would want you to help change things, and not get killed.

This is the second time my best beloved has volunteered my services for a village event.

Last time, it was cooking for the Harvest Supper. (He, who has made me one meal of pasta and pesto sauce in the last decade, no doubt felt his culinary skills we not up to scratch.)

So, the deal is that everyone who has volunteered (or been volunteered by their husbands – not that I want to carp on about it,) gets the same recipe and we all make a batch.

It was Chicken Normandy – rather nice with apples, cider etc etc. I made it and to give it its due, it smelled rather delicious and tasted very nice too.

So, we set off for the Village Hall with the neighbours looking forward to our annual ‘bop’ and a good supper.

Well, the casseroles go in and plated servings come out. All I can say is that whoever made the casserole we ate, they had not done justice to the recipe – and whoever got mine, got a bloody good deal.

Still, as I said, there is the chance to dance to the very fine Band With No Name, made up of the postman, his wife who is handily, the postmistress, the Rev Ken from the Congregationalist Church and a bass player from the heady metropolis of Petersfield.

The best beloved and I decided to start proceedings because no one else was dancing. Whilst we were doing our best – not brilliant but giving it a shot as they say – someone came up to our neighbour who was trying hard to pretend she was nothing to do with us, and said, “Just who are those people?”

This time, I have been volunteered to run the bookstall at the village festivities.

I have a sneaking suspicion it might involve more work than the Chicken Normandy.

I know someone who has left hospital about 10 days after he had a major operation – losing quite a lot of his internal ‘stuff.’

He is going home to a small house with his wife and four kids – two of them under two.

He should be in a convalescent home, looked after by nuns and nurses who feed him chicken broth and get him to sit outside in the sunshine.

But they don’t exist any longer – maybe they do for those who have Swiss accounts with HSBC but not for the likes of us.

Surely the re-introduction of convalescent homes would ease the bed-blocking crises, the failure of getting the right social care support.

Surely, a convalescent home would be a cheaper option for the state than a high-cost hospital bed. Maybe we could even be asked, heresy of heresy for someone of my political views, to pay a bit towards it.

I thought I’d better check whether I was right and there were no convalescent homes around – and indeed I was wrong.

There is one on the Sussex coast and very nice it looks too but it costs a minimum of £650 a week.

In Belgium it is part of the deal when you have a big operation and I know they have a different system but it surely (yes I know I have said ‘surely’ quite a lot) would be something the Government should consider.

So, if any parliamentary candidate makes it to this small out of the way corner, I shall raise the issue as they say.

Unlikely though.

We don’t even get Jehovah’s Witnesses here. Actually, our window cleaner turns out be a JW but he has never done more than discuss the recipe for the large piece of banana cake he had.

I have a small amount of work to do. At least I have some irons in the fire. Or at the very least, I have a paper clip and a couple of twigs to rub together.

It has so far necessitated getting up, dressing up a bit, looking professional and going to a meeting – and that hasn’t happened in a while I can tell you.

It has also required some very rusty mental cogs to work again and as things stand, it has been gratifying to realise that they can get into action, albeit a bit slowly and after some significant displacement activity.

Yes, yes I did need to go for a very long walk and make a chicken pie, but eventually I got down to it.

And indeed it felt good.

All I need now is the go ahead to do the full piece of work, some promise of money and someone to do it with me.

It is not that I cannot write an interactive case study for 100 PhDs, I have done it before, many times and with some success I can modestly assert.

But I am someone who works and thinks and gets energised into action so much better in a group of people than one my own.

This of course, has a direct bearing on the fact that I have not generated much at all in the way of work – I need some workmates and that isn’t what happens when you are self-employed, on your own, in Deepest Sussex.

This week in Oxfam has been rather a bumper one.

I think I may mentioned the very nice woman who donated some art books – well they boosted our sales nicely – and that is not a phrase which is usually on the lips in January.

Then there was the complete set of the Sopranos – all 28 DVDs in a box set. But we couldn’t sell them in the shop because they were not properly certificated for sale in the UK. No PG or whatever.

But it happened that Rosemary who ‘does’ the DVDs was in at the same time as me and asked if I wanted them.

(I like the Sopranos but stuck with French telly – hopeless – we rather got into box sets and had done the whole series more than once and back here of course there are the delights of Antiques Roadshow and Broadchurch.)

Anyway, I thought maybe I could sell them on ebay under my name and put the proceeds through the shop. So I brought them home, stuck them on for thirty quid and sold them within half an hour. Not bad.

All good things come in threes, as another volunteer told me, and she was right.

I had put to one side a children’s book which had been one of the few things rescued from a less than enticing donation and on Thursday I got round to rootling it out from under a pile to have a look online.

Now, what you may not know, is that books with nice illustrations are often valuable and this one had a series of rather lovely simple paintings of animals. (It is called The Square Book of Animals, which pretty much sums it up.)

But we have strict rules in the shop about childrens’ books being of very good quality in terms of their condition so a book like this – aged and a bit battered – could easily have got thrown away.

I was expecting say £20 and would have been happy with £10. So imagine my surprise when the cheapest one on the net was £800.

I rang our Old Book Expert and he duly came post haste and confirmed what I had found. (Most of the time, I get very excited about something and he has to dampen my enthusiasm and tell me it is worth £4.99.)

It turns out William Nicholson went on to be a significant artist and this was an early work and there are not many around.

So, here we are with a treasure and as I suspect there are not many people in Petersfield with the inclination to pay £700 for a book, it will go online.

And now I have to fess up to something.

Oxfam have decided to up our online sales targets by 10% in the next financial year. This is a lot when you are dependent on what people give you, and that is never certain.

Our financial year ends of March 31st. £700 is the most expensive book we have ever found. And do you know what, I simply won’t find the time to put it on the internet until Wednesday April 1^st.

Observant readers will have noticed that this is only the second of the three good things but I must break off to feed the dog and man so the next installment will follow.