Back home after some busy days a-training some sassy young diplomats, straight out of the egg and buzzing with cheery optimism until I arrived.

I also have been visiting an elderly friend in hospital.

Beyond a certain age most of one’s friends and maybe even one’s close relatives have died.

So there is unique loneliness and despair in being in a hospital ward, largely conscious but unable to move much or to read or talk, knowing that after so many years of life’s marathon one at last has entered the stadium and is plodding wearily and inexorably to the finishing line – and oblivion.

The hospital staff bustle around, and try to be positive. But how much can they be expected to motivate themselves to care kindly for people who are beyond being set right by clever medicine yet who somehow linger on defiantly as their body systems edge down, one by one?

What these ranks of aged patients – lying there like so many withered leaves – need more than anything is just love, expressed by someone being there with them as the long hopeless hours drag by.

And people fit enough not to be in hospital themselves are all rushing around, getting on with life. There is just not enough of this unique love to go round.