A year ago Kingston’s Guildhall flew the Pride flag for the first time. This was an initiative of one of our councillors, Sam Foulder-Hughes. We attended a short ceremony to mark the occasion, and I was struck by the way Sam thanked allies like us – straight people who support LGBT+ equality.

I hadn’t heard the term ally used in that context before, but I have also been hearing it recently in relation to Black Lives Matter. Yes, those of us who have no living experience of belonging to a specific identity can still empathise and campaign with those who do.

Today would have seen the Pride in London parade. The flag is flying this week again in Kingston, though sadly I can’t go in to see it, and there are numerous online events, including some Lib Dem ones, to mark the day. Google London Pride and the search engine throws up a rainbow border.

My active support for the LGBT+ community goes back to the 1970s, long before the time when that shorthand was commonly used. It was only a few years earlier that the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 had made homosexual acts between consenting men legal – acts between women had never been illegal.

My grandmother was a Hooker. I’m afraid she never really understood why we all fell about laughing when she told us that. As it happens there is a distant family connection with the slang term for a prostitute – but more of that later.

Which reminds me of something one of my sons told me this week. When he was young he learned the words prostitute and protestant at around the same time, and managed to confuse them for a while. It’s a good thing he worked out the difference before he went to live in Northern Ireland.

To return to the Hookers in my family. Last week I wrote about my father’s side of the family and the story of my great great grandmother who, in a remarkable echo of Downton Abbey, was disinherited after running off with the coachman.

This time I am thinking about my mother’s ancestors, and one illustrious one in particular. My grandmother was always proud of the fact that her nine times great uncle was Richard Hooker. She came from Exmouth and would often tell me about the statue that stood in the grounds of Exeter Cathedral. He is recognised by the Church of England as a Teacher of the Faith and remembered on the anniversary of his death, 3rd November 1600.

On a hot day like today, the one thing you would love to see is a photo of naked cyclists, right?

I had been trying to find this photo amongst the many thousands of pictures on my laptop, but I couldn’t remember when it was taken. Then yesterday it popped up on Facebook under the ‘See your memories’ feature. It was taken nine years ago in Bristol.

We were driving down to visit our son and his family and were stopped at the end of the M32 by around 100 cyclists circling the roundabout. And none of them had any clothes on. It was a joyful sight and made me smile. I managed to get a quick snap through the car window as we waited for them to go past.

Now I’m not a naturist, but, being a good liberal, I have no problem with people who are. In fact, the quantity of clothes that people wear on our favourite beach on Fuerteventura decreases to zero the further you get away from the hotel. Whilst staying there we discovered that the chaplain of the Anglican church in Correlejo was a leading light in the Christian Naturist Fellowship.

A photo of this sculpture hangs in my study

Alan Turing was born on 23rd June 1912. I wasn’t aware that I shared a birthday with one of my heroes until the 1990s, long after his untimely death. In fact, the world knew very little about him until government papers were released in the 1970s under the 30 year rule. And yet he is now going to be memorialised on the next £50 note.

Actually I did become aware of some of his work at University, because I read his seminal pre-War paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” as part of a Philosophy of Maths module. Neither I, nor my tutor, knew that this was to become the foundation for computer science, via his work on the theoretical constructs he called ‘universal machines’ – now referred to as ‘Turing machines’. His work was influenced by all the key figures in the field, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alonzo Church, David Hilbert and John von Neumann – all of whom I had read.

Later, of course, he was able to convert his imaginary machines into physical reality. After the War he built some of the earliest computers, first at the National Physical Laboratory and then at Manchester University.

Alan Turing wasn’t directly involved in building the Colossus – the world’s first electronic programmable computer – at Bletchley Park, although his theoretical ideas underpinned it. In the early days of the War he had developed another machine called the Bombe which was designed specifically to decrypt messages generated by the German Enigma machines.

Yes, it is my birthday. No, I am not 100, although three quarters of the way there.

What I am celebrating, to my surprise, is this, my 100^th Isolation Diary. Back in March I tentatively approached my colleagues on the editorial team of Lib Dem Voice to see if they thought it would be a good idea to have some daily musings on life in self-isolation. They have encouraged me even though the posts often have little direct political relevance.

So I have now managed to impose some 50,000 words on you, my readers. Most entries are introspective, exploring the inner life of lockdown, the limitations of shielding, and daily practicalities. Some have been commentaries on the wider political scene, such as the Black Lives Matter campaign, and the rewriting of history. Others have allowed me to examine my own values and relate them to my upbringing, to my faith, or even, in one case, my ancestry. I have explored some of my favourite places. There is probably too much about singing and the theatre, and the risks in belonging to a choir, and you have seen too many photos of the results of my cooking experiments.

Yesterday – too late for my diary – the Government announced new guidance for people who are shielding, like us. The scheme as a whole will finish at the end of July, although I’m pleased to hear that we will still be able to get priority slots for online supermarket deliveries.  From July 6^th we can meet outside in a group of up to six people. Single shielders can now form a bubble.