The green of summer has given way to autumn’s golds, reds and russets, which in turn have succumbed to an almost universal brownness, bar the beautiful beeches that brave the brisk blackness, still offering a kaleidoscope of green and tints of yellow. Elsewhere, what few leaves remain are clearly completely dead, like Monty Python’s parrot, devoid of any life, merely awaiting the next healthy gust to sever the umbilical cord and detach them from their summer home,  fluttering down to join the billions forming a crunchy carpet, turning paths into mulchways and drains into flood plains. Such aesthetic thoughts fail to trouble Callie (the whippet) as she roams the undergrowth in search of fleeing squirrels, tediously grey in appearance throughout the seasons, and generally just too fast for the slavering gnashers of the pursuing hound. The bushy-tailed rodent has one huge advantage of course. Surrounded by magnificent beeches it can go vertical at any moment like a Typhoon Eurofighter punching up through the clouds at Mach 2. Callie comes to a screaming halt at the tree’s base, before demonstrating a very impressive six foot sergeant jump as she mimics a Harrier jump jet, while the amused vermin can almost be heard laughing aloud from it’s aerial perch, thirty feet up. It ill behoves it to be too smug though. Callie has been known to return with bloody chops after the occasional successful chase.

Butchershole is a popular local haunt for dog-walkers with its many hectares of glorious beech woods, encasing acres and acres of open pastures, that once provided ideal gallops for the sadly defunct racing stables, but now serve as a marvellous playground for man’s four-legged friends of all descriptions. Callie relentlessly seeks out willing playmates in the hope that one day she’ll find a match for her speed and agility. It hasn’t happened yet, although a pair of pure-bred whippets left her pleasantly exhausted. She has Formula 1 acceleration, an incredible turning circle at high speed and an impressive side-step. If only she could catch a rugby ball too she’d definitely be playing for England.

Talking of athletes, daughter Tiggy has been selected to join the Eastbourne Netball Club U13 Performance squad, following Sunday’s trials, with her coaches saying “she performed very, very well and shows huge promise”. Needless to say, she still thinks she’s useless and devoid of skill. Definitely her Mother’s daughter, I rarely suffered from such doubts, although undoubtedly should have done! After a mental hiccup on the hockey field she’s also been selected to rejoin the School 1st team as they head to Repton School in Derbyshire (a long way north of Watford Gap and passports therefore required) at the end of the week for the Prep Schools National Finals. The competition takes place all day on Friday, finishing at 4.45. The return journey from Burton involves a long stretch on the M1, a full semi-circle of the M25, then the 50mph M23 (being made into a “smart” motorway!) and finally the tedious A27 from Brighton to Eastbourne……..on a Friday evening…….. Google maps predicts a journey time of 3 hours and 56 minutes…..at midday on Tuesday. Ha!

It’s a tough decision whether or not to go…….?!

As this is Number 57, there will be plenty of variety today, and I don’t give a can of beans what you think.

It’s approaching 11am as I write, so I will have to take two minutes out for remembrance at that point. Forgive me if there’s a short pause. I’m also hectic today with bucketloads of washing to do, floors to be washed, silver to be polished and my hair’s a dreadful mess. In these gender-neutral days I’m not sure if I’m pink, blue or a delicate shade of mauve.

There’s a headline on the front page of today’s Times that says “Students turn against free speech amid ‘culture of conformity'”. According to the article, fewer than half of students consistently support freedom of speech and two fifths (that’s 40%) favour censorship and (sic) no-platforming (The Times?!) of controversial speakers. Ally that with last week’s…..(sorry it’s 11)

……(this definitely won’t be The Last Post) news that a local education authority has banned children from playing Tag in the playground because it’s too dangerous. What are PLAYgrounds for?!! Saints preserve us, where are we going. All this would be laughable if it wasn’t so deadly serious. I and my fellow golf commentators now have regular dinner conversations about how we have to pause every time before we open our mouths to ensure we aren’t going to offend somebody, somewhere.

It’s wonderful that women have got the vote and will soon have equal pay, hopefully, and equal everything else. It’s great that homosexual men can snog in public without fear of chemical neutering, that lesbians walk down the street holding hands without being accused of being dutch waterways, that society is generally more caring than once it was……or is it? My parents generation knew how to look after neighbours and people less well off than themselves. My mother was constantly visiting the sick and elderly, mainly because of her strongly held Christian beliefs. They fought an awful war to uphold our democratic principles and rights to free speech. They and we, were also brought up to be considerably tougher and more resilient than many of today’s youth. How they must be turning in their graves if they are long-suffering enough to still be paying attention to what’s going on in this dangerously evolving society.

As I write, Classic FM is playing “Fanfare for the Common Man” in the background. It always brings back memories of the first time I heard it, which was at The Royal Tournament at Earls Court, a hugely spectacular showpiece that I used to commentate on. How long will it be I wonder before Westminster Council decides that the Naval Gun Race is too dangerous (yes it is dangerous, but that’s why the competing teams love it and why the crowds love watching it) and decide that it must be carried out with cardboard and papier maché guns? Or that the brilliant display of charging horse-drawn gun carriages by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery requires too much skill and equine courage to be safe and must therefore be carried out at the walk? That would be exciting. Or that the counter-marching Massed Bands of the Royal Marines pose a serious threat, lest one of the trombonists over-extends his slide and catches a trumpeter on the ear? Yes, all utterly stupid, but no more crazy than so many of the news stories that hit us daily.

The front page of The Thunderer also has a splendid photo of the poppy-laden Queen, all in black, eyes shut, her face in repose, as she stands on the Foreign Office balcony overlooking a crowded and silent Whitehall, full of serving and ex-servicemen and many others who’ve given loyal and outstanding service to their country. Oh and Jeremy Corbyn.

A penny for your thoughts, Your Majesty. Actually, I’d pay a lot more than a penny.

 

By an extraordinary coincidence, the front page of The Sunday Times has come up with a rather more effective illustration of what one trillion looks like, than I employed in my previous blog. According to the ST, if you spend £1 every ten seconds (24/7), it will take 4 months to spend one million pounds. If you have one billion to fritter, you’ll need the help of cryogenics; the spending spree will take 317 years. The trillionaire looking to bankrupt him(her)self at the same rate will require considerable help from his/her descendants as the improbable mission would take an eye-watering 316,880 years. If you substitute dollars for pounds and reverse the process, to pay off the US National Debt would take a little under 7 million years. Now there’s a thought! I’d love to hear The Donald’s plans for that one.

All this is featured today because the Conservatives reckon one trillion pounds is what Labour’s spending plans would cost. Oh what fun they are all having. Does anybody believe anything this load of reprobates, of all hues, say now?

Anyway, back to my plans for enhancing education for all. The difficulties of playing sport at State Schools dates back to the 1970’s (from memory, it may have been even earlier), when clever people in high places realised they could make money by selling off school sports grounds and other recreational amenities. So many schools now have such pathetic facilities that the students are depending on local clubs and coaches if they wish to attain any level of competence. The ever growing need for building land means the chances of recovering the position is probably quite slim. However, I have a plan!

Put your hand up if you think society has become totally distorted and twisted in its priorities and values. Are footballers and other sportsmen GROSSLY overpaid? Should nurses, teachers, firemen, policemen, (doctors?), and all manner of other public servants be much better remunerated? Are far too many CEO’s and other senior executives disgracefully over-earning, often for under-performing?

How about if a salary cap was applied to football clubs? Dramatically reduce the ludicrous transfer fees and monumental salaries of the players and instead use those hundreds of millions of pounds for the greater good of their communities. If every leading football club was required to build state of the art facilities in various suitable places in their regions, specifically for use by schools and the wider public, what a dramatic effect that might have. Modern facilities, indoors and out, can be used 24/7 and whilst I agree it would require considerable planning and coordination, by lengthening the school day it should be possible to cater for a dramatically greater number of pupils than have anything at present. My children’s working day starts at 8.15am and typically ends anywhere between 5.30 and 8pm. Don’t abandon Public Schools, just make the State Sector more like them. As Jim Reeves might have said, “I hear the sound of distant squealing”!

Of course, none of this will happen until the whole world goes bankrupt, aliens from outer space finally decide to uncloak the invisibility shields on their earth-gazing spaceships and global warming causes such an ice melt that Africa becomes the size of Britain and our once great island does a rather sad impression of Atlantis.

There’s an old saying (about two minutes old), that if you put one hundred economists in a room together you’d get ninety nine different opinions. Actually you might well get one hundred variations but I’m allowing for an unexpected collaboration.

It seems, however, that there is a growing communion among the “experts” that they’ve unearthed Nirvana. It’s called the Magic Money Tree or MMT. In fact that really stands for Modern Monetary Theory but I fancy it adds up to the same thing! As far as this non-economist can decipher, The Theory is that governments can now borrow as much money as they like, to spend on capital projects like roads, railways, schools and hospitals. The resulting growth in GDP, will mean the shekels come flooding back into the Treasury coffers allowing the massive debts to be repaid. Some seemingly quite brilliant people are convinced this will work…….

Harking back to the 1970’s and ’80’s, which weren’t always the happiest socially, the Government’s books were generally just about balanced, with minimal debt. It was only when we were subjected to the wise and prudent fiscal management of Gordon Brown that our National Debt rose to a staggering £1.4 trillion. Hence when George Osborne took over, “austerity” seemed essential. So successful were his policies that the debt is now a record-breaking £1.8 trillion. Despite that, it seems the economy is now in a much healthier state and it’s therefore quite possible to plan new public spending amounting to hundreds of billions of pounds. I think I’ve missed something along the way?

But we are mere minnows compared to Trump’s America. Their National Debt is now over $22 trillion and climbing, with borrowing in the region of 105% of GDP. I am neither a mathematician nor an economist but surely it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world realises that the once great US of A has become a Banana Republic and the mighty dollar will collapse until its worth less than a used Tetley teabag. The Donald will then be vying with President Maduro of Venezuela for next year’s Nobel Prize for “Economist of the Decade”.

Incidentally, in case you can’t get your head around a trillion; in seconds, that equates to roughly thirty two thousand years. (32,000). (One billion is thirty one and a half years; 31.5). So America’s debt in seconds is seven hundred thousand years, (700,000) give or take. It makes my £8,000 overdraft look entirely manageable.

My old business guru said that the first thing he looked for in a potential employee was their education and academic achievements. One of Mr Corbyn’s more inspired solutions to improving the nation’s learning is to close down all private schools. Genius. If the politics of envy dictates this should happen, there is a much more logical and beneficial solution. Pump all those extra billions into the State sector, improving facilities and the quality of the teaching staff. Why, for instance, do State schools finish at 3 pm? They could do an extra hour every day at least, engaging in sport perhaps. With a fitter and leaner student population, there might be less pressure on the NHS and as soon as hard-pressed parents realise their little darlings will do just as well under State management, private schools will automatically decline anyway for lack of numbers. I know, it all sounds too simple!

I’ll pursue this thought tomorrow, particularly the availability of sports facilities. I have a plan!

2MPC

Amidst yet more political resignations and mud-slinging, it may have escaped your notice that Wendell Pierce, the fifty five year old star of stage, screen and the London Underground has finally achieved his lifetime ambition by bringing the house down during a performance of Death of a Salesmen at the West End’s Piccadilly Theatre. Sadly for him it meant the auditorium had to be evacuated as too many of the audience were getting plastered.

I satisfied a vaguely held ambition the other day, by attending my first auction. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long. It wasn’t Bonhams or Christie’s, where you need to mortgage your house just to walk through the door. No, this was Watsons of Heathfield, where the auctioneer, a buxom, larger than life lady, starts off on a ladder outside, flogging garden pots and rolls of rotting garden hose for a tenner, before moving inside an old shed to rattle through over five hundred lots of junk, ranging from a rejected Hotpoint washing machine to boxes and boxes of damaged china, unbelievably tatty sofas to wobbly pine chairs, well chewed by Fido in a previous life.

I was lucky to bump into an East London friend who knows a bargain when he sees one after a lifetime of wheeler-dealer trading. He’s not called Rodney, nor does he drive a three-wheeled Reliant Robin (far from it!), but you wouldn’t be surprised to see him rock up as a Pearly King. From an outside stall, he bought a wooden sign saying “St. Leonards” for ten quid. Another trader immediately offered him twenty, but he refused saying he could get thirty for it. How impressive is that! Double or even triple your money in a few minutes. OK we’re not talking a Euromillions life-changer here, but if you do those sort of trades often enough, there’s a good living to be made. It was fascinating to watch and definitely merits a revisit and perhaps a trip to the lovely Sussex market town of Lewes, renowned for its antique shops and slightly more upmarket auctions.

Talking of auctions and lotteries, how’s Brexit getting on?

I awoke this morning to the disappointing, but unsurprising news that the Houses of Parliament were still standing. At least, I made that assumption as the lead story on the Radio 4 news was Brexit and not how a latter day G.Fawkes had been foiled by our excellent security services in his improbable bid to turn the Mother of Parliaments into the mother and father of all rubble heaps. Even less surprising I suppose was that Brexit wasn’t only the main story, but the follow-up and the grand finale as well, allied with the fact that Jacob Rees Mogg is out of touch with the “common man” (who’d have guessed it!) and Boris the Bountiful didn’t really mean it when he said that….whatever it was he said last month. All that according to Jeremy Corbyn, who thinks that China is a vision of loveliness run by Mandarins who spend their time singing The Mikado and building lots of nice new cities for their incredibly grateful peasants who don’t actually live or work there but can, if they wish, walk round and admire the brilliance of Xi’s, very expensive, town planning. The millions of northern muslims who are incarcerated, ready to be cut up as generous donors of their vital organs, seem to have conveniently escaped Jeremy’s somewhat rose-tinted gaze. Still, amongst all this infantile posturing and mud-slinging a Phoenix is rising from the ashes of the Liberal Party to declare that she is actually the Prime Minister in waiting. The fact that for Ms Swinson to pass through the hallowed portal of No.10, there needs to be a ninety one per cent swing to the Lib Dems seems to have got lost amidst the bravura and braggadociousness. (I use that merely to insert a seventeen letter word into my dissertation, thereby appearing somewhat learned and erudite. You can fool some of the people all of the time……etc.) Ok, ninety one might be a slight exaggeration, but as I haven’t got a clue what the real figure is, that will have to suffice. Either way, Eeyore has a better chance of making the first successful Mars landing than Auntie Jo has of adding a third female portrait to the Downing Street rogues gallery.

You might have noticed there’s no fence-sitting for me, no attempt to hedge one’s bets with “what-ifs” and “supposing this happens”. The exciting news is that if the aforementioned passionate “Remainer” should somehow overcome such impossible odds and actually nick the keys from Boris, your correspondent will have so much egg on his face the family will be eating omelettes for a week!

Amidst all this drama, news has emerged that the Welsh Secretary has resigned because he allegedly knew about a former aide’s role in sabotaging a rape trial, despite having denied having any knowledge of it….or something. I’m resigned to resignations, they’re coming so thick and fast, but I confess I feel a modicum of sympathy for the $12million a year, single, unattached Chief Exec of McDonalds who’s been forced to resign for indulging in a consensual relationship with a female employee. Heaven forbid what outrageous behaviour. He richly deserves to end up on the scrap heap alongside all those paedophiles, rapists and de-frocked Roman Catholic priests for whom celibacy meant not having sex with a woman.

As Henry II might have said ” will nobody rid us of this turbulent p……..political correctness?”.

I can’t help wondering, as the finishing touches are put to numerous stuffed Guys and mountainous bonfires around the Country, whether a latter-day Fawkes is at this very moment assembling his crew of ne’er-do-wells, ready to drag innumerable barrels of gunpowder into the vaults of the Palace of Westminster, to put a dramatic end to one of the worst episodes in British parliamentary history?

The perpetrators would no doubt rapidly discover that the River Thames is more than just a giant reservoir for the firemen’s hoses, as they are ferried to Traitor’s Gate and thence to Tower Hill where the axeman would be ready and willing to separate heads from bodies in the time-honoured fashion for those guilty of high treason. However, how many Robin Hoods might there be around the country, ready to ride to the rescue of the men and/or women who had shown the courage to do what I suspect an awful lot of the Great British law-abiding public would love to do themselves? Commentators tend to talk about the “Westminster Village”. Perhaps the upcoming General Election will give The Villagers a chance to leave their cosseted green benches (if a bench can be cosseted?) and venture forth into the real world where for the most part I fear our elected representatives are now held in even lower regard than journalists and estate agents.

Maybe I am a bear of little brain, but I fail to see how an election is going to resolve the impasse? A not insignificant number of Labour supporters yearn for independence from Europe, but can they really vote for Boris the Bountiful? Possibly an even larger faction of Conservatives hope passionately that Brexit will end up on the compost heap of rubbish ideas, but surely, surely they couldn’t put their thumbprints alongside Corbyn’s name? With the failed/successful Conspirators hanging from London Bridge, we are seemingly destined for a hung parliament, with many shades of political loyalty occupying the green benches in almost equal numbers. What then? Aha, a eureka moment….let’s have a People’s Vote to break the deadlock! And (I know that’s poor grammar…but…) so the Magic Roundabout spins ever faster, with no sign of Dougal, Ermintrude, Brian or Dylan to rescue us from the madness. “Time for bed” said Zebedee.

Is it possible we might wake up one morning and find it’s all been a bad dream? In yer dreams!

I was always taught that it’s very negative to criticise others without having a Masterplan to put forward as an alternative. My plan is very simple. Disband The EU then there wouldn’t be anything to leave! Return to a Common Market, leave the Germans to run Germany, the Italians to self-destruct without any interference, the Spanish to start another Inquisition and the French to be, well, French. Thousands of grossly overpaid bureaucrats would have to swallow an enormous dose of reality, the NHS wouldn’t have to pay Trump prices for narcotics and we’d all live happily ever after. (Especially if the revolting Scots get their way and vote for independence!) …….OK, I don’t really mean that…..

2MPC

Let me start this 51st missive with a huge apology to my legion of dedicated fans and followers. A period of unprecedented mental disturbance has caused me to take my eye off many important balls, but a gap of nineteen days tests the patience and loyalty of even the most committed reader. Which leads me to think that I am probably writing only to Michael, my guardian angel, who is thankfully ever present and a source of great solace in times of need. So….

Dear Michael,

In a time of incredible sporting achievements, I have been musing on one of my favourite subjects: leadership. England now has four football clubs in the final of the two big European competitions. Is this cause to slap ourselves on our national back and bask in the glory of our brilliance? At the risk of deflating this jingoistic bubble all four teams are managed by foreigners and typically the teams involved have about three England-qualified players each. As usual in football it all comes down to who has the deepest pockets in a game that requires very deep pockets just to get past the bouncers at the entrance. That said, it’s clear that the quite magnificent comebacks by Liverpool and Spurs in particular, in the Champions League semi-finals were achieved in large part thanks to the genius of Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino, their respective managers.

In my thirty six years of sports broadcasting I have witnessed a particular phenomena time and again, across a broad range of sports; namely the radical impact a new “leader” can have on a team, or indeed individual. Without changing the personnel, suddenly the team starts to perform and realise its full potential, frequently  going from also-rans to world beaters. What’s the magic potion, the secret formula that permits this to happen? More often than not, the new person in charge oozes charisma. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s vital that the Manager (let’s use that as a generic term to cover all persons “in charge”) has the respect of his or her chargelings. Sometimes that’s achieved by previous deeds, but as Martin Johnson (one of English rugby’s greatest Locks and captains) discovered, that will only last so long if you don’t step up to the plate in your new role. In modern sport there are so many elements to success; tactical planning, attention to the tiniest of details, training regimes, fitness, nutrition, sports psychology, etc etc. The successful manager will almost certainly have recruited a great team of experts and specialists to handle all those different aspects. But ultimately the buck stops at the top. All the extraordinary feats that I can recall in the last sixty years have occurred with an extraordinary man in charge. Equally, many great teams have under-performed with an inadequate Manager.

There are so many different qualities required and not everyone has all of them. Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson were two very different characters, with contrasting techniques, but Clough took a very average Nottingham Forest team to the summit of Europe, while Ferguson enjoyed twenty six years at Manchester United, winning thirty eight trophies and becoming one of the legends of the game.

One of the interesting things to me is how people reach these elevated positions, in any walk of life. I spent thirteen years in the Armed Forces, where leaders were trained from the inception to lead. Everything we did was designed to teach us how to command the respect of our subordinates and how to make the right decisions in times of crisis, often under intense pressure. Maybe the greatest leaders are born, but in my mind you can learn to become a very good leader. You can certainly learn good management and that’s probably a crucial part of being a good leader. In peacetime, it’s true that a number of very senior officers reach their elevated status by being expert managers and by keeping their noses clean as the much maligned “yes man”. Those folk tend to get found out very quickly once the shooting starts!

I then spent over twenty years in and around the BBC. Here there’s a very different career path. Generally broadcasters broadcast and remain in that role, although there have been exceptions. For the most part the men and women in senior positions of management have come through the production side. This means that if you are a creative genius, an ideas person, who can bring great new programmes to air, or indeed improve on old ones, there’s a very good chance you will be promoted into senior management, often with no aptitude or inclination for your new role. Some learn the new skills required with relish, others don’t but not infrequently are promoted well above their level of competence.

It’s been intriguing to me as an outsider to witness the same thing happening in Education. Teachers, unsurprisingly, are trained to teach. Success in that role often brings elevation to higher positions, ultimately, for the chosen few, to Headship. Far from being teachers, those men and women are essentially Company Directors and eventually Chief Executives, running very large businesses with significant budgets, requiring great skill in personnel management, sales and marketing, PR etc.

For all I know the same could apply to the NHS, the Police , the Railways and a whole tranche of other businesses and services.

The European Tour was until quite recently run by former professional golfers. Realising that it had become a large, multi-million pound, worldwide business, the Board of Directors took the big decision to bring in a non-golfing Chairman with extensive high-level business experience. He in turn recruited a high-flying business Chief Executive who then revamped the Board, bringing in more non-golfers with broad business experience. He ruthlessly axed a significant amount of dead wood and recruited eighty new personnel to increase the expertise and dynamism across a broad range of activities. Professional golfers know how to play golf, not, for the most part, how to run a big business.

It’s an intriguing conundrum, with no easy answer, but I do know that I have witnessed a depressing amount of crap leadership from people who don’t understand the basics of handling people, perhaps the most important commodity in any operation.

The Managers of Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea are clearly much more than managers. They lead.

Happy Easter. As the sun continues to scorch the drought-hardened earth, happy holidaymakers pollute the beaches and motorways in a lemming-like obsession with sea and sand. Is this all down to global warming? The weather I mean, rather than the annual pursuit of motorway jam time. I have always been something of a rebel at a very low key level, but demonstrations at a Suffragette or Extinction Rebellion altitude have always given me cause for pause. I confess though to a sneaking admiration for those who are risking life and limb, let alone imprisonment, to convince the Government and the wider public, that urgent action is required on a broad scale to resolve the many and varied environmental issues that face us. Whilst our politicians and a significant proportion of the public tie themselves in knots over whether we should be in/out/half in/threequarters out of Europe there is surely a much greater issue playing out in front of our eyes that these brave and determined souls are seeking to highlight. In my exceedingly humble and probably rather ill-informed opinion I get a strong feeling that targets to achieve things by 2050 or even 2035 are far, far too lax. It was only a few years ago that we were told that renewable energy was a long way down the road and there was no way it could fuel our immediate needs. Before we know it there are windmills wherever you look and vast acres of formerly productive farmland given over to ugly, but apparently effective, black panels that capture the sun’s rays and convert them into life-enhancing electricity….or something. My point is that where there’s a will there is almost always a way and with strong and determined leadership and some radical thinking we could move things very much more quickly. For instance, if Kenya can ban plastic bags why can’t we? Just do it! People will quickly get the message that you need to take shopping bags with you when going to the stores. If you’re one of the afflicted commuters who can’t get to work you’re probably mightily hacked off, I would be too, but on this occasion I’m on the side of Extinction Rebellion. Perhaps some of that nine hundred million fund to rebuild Notre Dame could be re-deployed?! (Did I say “strong and determined leadership”? Not too much of that around these days!)

On a completely different topic, I’ve just started reading a book by Dr Michael Mosley called The Clever Guts Diet. It was kindly given to me by my adopted sister who has been virtually housebound for six years following a disastrous treatment for melanoma that has wrecked her immune system along with damaging vital organs. As a long time sufferer of IBS I’ve been conscious for quite awhile about the importance of the gut and the “microbiome”, with its trillions of micro-organisms that serve a crucial role in keeping us fit and healthy. It seems the gut is almost a second brain and has a huge influence on the way our bodies function. For those who suffer with auto-immune diseases such as Diabetes 2 and rheumatoid arthritis this is essential reading. There is now good research to suggest that with accurate testing and good execution based on those results, it should be possible to leave nasty pharmaceuticals behind forever. Now that has to be worth trying!

Enjoy the sun, if not the jams.

2DtC

 

 

I write this with a slight watering of the eye after watching five and a half hours of the most extraordinarily, exhilarating and inspiring golf, culminating in Tiger Woods winning The Masters for the first time since 2005 and his first Major title since 2008. It’s his fifteenth Major to close to within three of Jack Nicklaus’s record (18) and the first one that he has won without leading going into the final round. Prior to it happening, Gary Player suggested that should Tiger win, it would be the greatest achievement in the history of the game. He’s accomplished this after numerous knee operations, four major back operations, the last one to fuse two vertebrae, and overcoming numerous personal and physical issues that would have sunk almost anyone else. He even had the chipping yips and having suffered myself for many years I know what an extraordinary feat it is, just to overcome those, especially under the intense pressure of trying to win another Major on one the the trickiest short game courses in the world.

A friend of mine said to me recently “expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed”. I suppose when it comes to friends that’s not a bad thought, if a little depressing and I really hope friends don’t see me in that light. But I guess we’ve all experienced the fickle nature of friendship and how unreliable people can be, sadly. The old maxim “a friend in need, is a friend indeed” is so true. When you do find that lovely friend who can be totally trusted and relied upon to be there whenever you need them……don’t let them go! However, I’m equally certain that it’s not something that we should apply to our own wants and desires, in fact exactly the opposite. Surely in everything we do we should aim for the stars and if we fall short, so be it, but to allow the prospect of disappointment to limit our ambition would be a terrible way to live. It was intriguing to read some of the recent articles about James Cracknell after his recent success rowing for Cambridge in the Boat Race. What an incredible inspiration he is. So too Tiger Woods. He was never limited by the fear of disappointment or indeed the fear of failure. As the time-worn old saying goes it really is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. I wish I could persuade my thirteen year old son of that. All his young life he has been terrified of failure, not least for appearing stupid in front of friends and that fear has often limited his ambition. I wish I could find a way to make him realise that nobody will laugh if you always give of your best and if they do, they are lesser people than you. If you have any suggestions…….?

Meanwhile, imagine how Tiger Woods must be feeling now. To have overcome the ignominy of his dramatic fall from grace, the self-destruction of the pedestal upon which he had placed himself, to then return to the summit of his profession and achieve a feat that no right-minded person ever thought possible leaves one almost speechless in admiration. He’s won again against a raft of the World’s best players, many of whom grew up watching, admiring and even hero-worshipping him. I’ve known Tiger since he was an amateur, in a professional capacity. I’ve interviewed him often and walked alongside him on fairways more times than I can remember as he’s scaled the heights and plumbed the depths. He went from being approachable and friendly in the early days to cold and unwelcoming as the pressures of international fame forced him into his armoured shell. I had a notorious set-to with him in the World Matchplay Championship at Wentworth when he thought I had accused him of not trying. He and his manager Mark Steinberg spent an hour on the phone to my BBC Producer that evening complaining about the interview and demanding an apology. Ironically my bosses had all congratulated me on the interview at the time, but changed their tune after Steinberg’s accusation of gutter journalism. For the record, I actually said that I had heard others (including Andrew Cotter one of our commentators) saying that he appeared not to be giving one hundred per cent and I presumed that wasn’t the case. I confess that after that there were times when I was happy to see him suffer, in a professional sense anyway, but along with the rest of the golfing world I pay homage to a truly momentous feat and accept that he must now be recognised as the greatest golfer of all time……and he’s not done yet!

2FE