The first Christmas card of the year has arrived...and what's this, it's from the Royal Mail. It has a cheery red delivery van swooping over snowy slopes with a gaggle of acrobatic postmen spelling out: “We're all about you this Christmas.” Inside there's a load of guff about what to do if they have to leave a “sorry you were out card”. As in my case it would be more appropriate if they left a “sorry you were upstairs card”, I was interested to read that their generosity extends to waiving the 50p charge they usually make for the local collect scheme, where you find the post that they failed to get to your home now lurking in your local post office.

This is the price that they expect me to pay for not getting downstairs quickly enough. It seems extortionate and unreasonable. So I refuse to pay. No, I don't break any law. I just don't collect the parcels or letters the postie so impatiently needed me to sign for: I leave them to wilt and die wherever they are dumped.

If it doesn't reach me first time, it's gone for good. Your new novel? An invitation from somewhere grand? A reminder that my tax is due? They'll all be shredded in those remote places that the Royal Mail likes to hide them. I'm reminded of the advice given by the late Quentin Crisp: if you persist in doing nothing, the problem eventually disappears. And so does my post.

Why is the Royal Mail sending Christmas cards anyway? Why isn't it using every penny it can to keep the actual post offices open? There's a sort of chop logic here; it will waive the cost of collection by me, so that I will willingly schlep round in all weathers and thus keep its post offices in business. Ah, I notice the small print: “Subject to some geographical restrictions.” Perhaps the jaunty little red vans on the Christmas card really are taking my unclaimed post to the land of snow and Father Christmas.

So starts the whole Christmas agony of the Christmas card list. Who to keep on this year, who to leave off? Sometimes it's simple: some have taken themselves off by dying. Sometimes a Christmas card is the only evidence you get that people are still alive.

I favour keeping in touch with the oldest friends: some on my list go back to schooldays. Once the festival is over I sit and read all those little messages and updates. But what should one do about those who sent a round-robin explaining: “We are giving up Christmas cards and sending money to charity instead. We promise to think of you at the festive season.”

Is this mean-spirited, briskly efficient (how do we know they've sent money to charity?) or subtly superior (we prefer charity direct to your routinely dull nativity charity card)? You can toss on many a sleepless pillow trying to sort out that one.

Brutal revolution

Richard Arkwright was a remarkable man: an uneducated barber's apprentice who more or less invented the Industrial Revolution. Not simply because he invented a water frame that could spin vast numbers of threads, but because he invented the factory system to house it.

In the mid-18th century the textile industry of the North of England was largely a domestic business, with machines set up in tiny cottages, family and working life overlapping. Arkwright was born in Preston and it was there, in 1768, that he invented his cotton-spinning frame.

Three years later he established a water-powered cotton mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, and the industrial world was transformed. Soon the dales of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire were dotted with such mills, and towns such as Manchester and Leeds were drawing millions to work their dark satanic versions.

Joseph Wright, of Derby, painted Arkwright's portrait, now acquired jointly by the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston.

It is a fine acquisition: a tribute to one of the first great entrepreneurs. But he was not a benign man. He built cottages for his workers, but in them he housed large families whose children he employed from the age of 6 to work 12 hour days. His initiative led to a brutal and exploitative factory system, its workforce enslaved to long hours and meagre wages. It needed other great men — Lord Shaftesbury, for one — to put right its unforeseen consequences.

Today, Cromford Mill sits in its rural setting, restored and pristine, a World Heritage Site as fine as Big Pit in Wales and the Iron Bridge in the Midlands. Now Richard Arkwright's pot-bellied and prosperous presence is on public display to remind us how individuals once transformed the country by their sheer unbridled enterprise, and created misery for millions.

Dementia help

The future offers hope for those with dementia. The Iris Murdoch Building at the University of Stirling, Scotland, opened by Dame Judi Dench in 2003, houses the country's first purpose-built centre for research into dementia. It develops services to help people to live with the condition, and informs architects, teachers and carers about how they can ease the sufferer's journey from mild symptoms towards more serious afflictions, such as Alzheimer's.

The centre demonstrates how design can help. There are drinking mugs with big handles and a rutted surface that makes them easier to grip, for example. Anyone who wanders off — as Iris Murdoch does in the film Iris — can be intercepted by way of electronic intervention. A fridge and food cupboards with glass doors remind people to eat. Dementia-friendly public spaces are promoted, with gates and doors in bright colours to guide those who get lost.

Ever since my appointment as the Voice of Older People, I've heard at every hand from those who feel neglected. The word “invisible” crops up a good deal. I am discovering that all over the country there are enterprises — charities, research foundations, websites — taking older people seriously and dedicated to promoting their interests. I'm cheered by the scale of what's happening. We must have more of it!

joanbakewell@thetimes.co.uk

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