Phew, made it with no more than extremely sore quads having completed two hundred and forty squats in a couple of hours on Saturday. It’s amazing how painful walking can be, with muscles that would rather be in a horizontal position. Eastbourne 4ths (currently top of League 8) fielded first against East Dean and Friston Cricket Club 2nd XI, who’s charming ground nestles beneath the rolling Sussex Downs in sight of Birling Gap and Beachy Head, where those that are tired of life too frequently take the short route from clifftop to sea. With no such gloomy thoughts, we fielded first and looked as though we would contain the opposition to about 150 off their forty overs, but a late burst from their 1st team ringer took them to 175, on a damp and lively wicket. Their No.4 had retired hurt with a strained buttock muscle, but with two overs left and nine wickets down he bravely returned to the fray, without a flinch or twitch of the offending tendon. Unfortunately he’d only faced a couple of balls against our fifteen year old 6’5″ fast bowler when he tried to hook a ball only just short of a good length that got big on him (that’s cricketing parlance for a ball that climbs steeply) and he took it full force on the right cheek bone, just below his glasses. He went down like a sack of coal falling off the back of a lorry and a disconcerting groan. With copious amounts of concern and ice packs he was able to stagger back to the pavilion almost unaided, but he would have had a nasty headache that night. Why wasn’t he wearing a helmet? Only he knows, but I suspect he probably will be next time he goes out to bat! Sadly I didn’t get the chance to test my recently refurbished Keeley willow as the heavens opened before we could commence our reply. Match abandoned, ten points apiece and we stay top of the league. I say “we” as an honorary member making my debut for the team in the absence of anyone else willing to fill the holes left by covid, self isolation, holidays and probably fear of the East Dean Tiger. (There really is one. It’s a renowned watering hole just next to the ground!). I was ok to play (father and son don’t mix) because son Oliver had been promoted to the 3rd XI, where he took 3 for 4 off six overs in dismissing the oppo for 80 and going on to win by four wickets. Looks like he might be a third team regular now.

I don’t think Beachy Head got a mention, but they were talking about death and its inevitability on Radio 4 this morning. That got me thinking. Which in itself was a relief because a bit earlier they had been talking about the number of people of my age that suffer from Alzheimers. It’s sometimes said that there are more people alive now than have ever lived. Assuming there are about 7 billion currently occupying our rapidly warming, burning, drowning, freezing planet, that’s in fact roughly 100 billion short of the total number of humanoids that have trodden this Earth. Apparently. That’s an awful lot of souls. Heaven, (I think that’s the Oxford comma?) and indeed hell must be fearfully crowded places. I wonder which is busier? Do they have a finite capacity? Is that why more and more are being forced to spend time down/up here? Is there any way they can be filtered, so that more residents from Heaven get recycled than Hellites. Surely Lucifer can’t be happy about giving his charges a second chance anyway? Or are they sent to enlist more recruits for the Eternal Fires of Damnation? These are important questions to which I don’t believe the Church of England, or any other, has provided satisfactory answers. It must be time to start a protest movement.

Yours outraged,

A. Victim,

Tunbridge Wells.

(I actually live in Eastbourne, but they always seem to come from TW)

(TW is also short for Tiger Woods. I wonder how he’s getting on after a serious structural rearrangement when his self-drive loan car went cross country?)

What a sporting feast the last fortnight has been! Thankfully our tv remote has speech control, so you only have to whisper “Sky Sports Cricket” to transition from Karate Kata in Tokyo to England making a complete horlicks of it against India in between the showers at Trent Bridge. If nothing else it saves the humiliation of being shown how to navigate the complexities of modern viewing by one’s teenage children.

As a former commentator, it’s hard not to view with a critical ear. (Or do I mean listen with a critical eye?) Probably the best Colemanballs I’ve heard so far is “and the leading three are working as a pair”. As someone who’s committed plenty of bloopers in the glasshouse of live sport, I probably shouldn’t stow thrones, but that is just illiterate!

Have you watched the Karate Kata? A lot of Olympic sports only hit the mass public eye every four years and most of the martial arts probably fall into that category. But Kata is something that should be on our screens to start every working day. It works wonders for your failing supply of oxytocin. For the uninitiated, it is not a contest. It involves one person in fancy dress, going through a series of poses, with an incredibly steely look and the occasional frightening scream. It’s hysterical. Goodness knows what’s actually going on, how it is scored or come to that why they bother in the first place.

I’m not sure if it’s a function of old age or a sign of growing imaginative creativity, but increasingly I find myself getting inexplicable flashbacks of previous moments in my life, mostly images and thoughts that haven’t entered my conscious brain for years. I’ll be standing at the sink, scouring Alison’s burnt pans, when I’ll suddenly get a really vivid picture of launching kittens off the roof of our observation tower in the Omani desert, back in 1973. (I was on the parachute squadron and we used the parachutes from two inch mortar rounds to train our desert cats in airborne tactics). It’s quite disconcerting as it’s happening more and more and the thoughts are totally random. I can’t help thinking the Almighty is preparing me for the Afterlife.

I’m due to be playing my third game of cricket this season tomorrow, for the Eastbourne 4th XI. Weather permitting and it may well not, I am scheduled to keep wicket for forty overs. If JaJa99 No 206 fails to materialise you’ll know it was a game too far! Meanwhile I’m on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the next round of Karate Kata…..

Leave school, join the professional ranks and put behind you all those tedious rules and regulations and petty punishments, right? Wrong! News this week that two octogenarians of noble rank were banned from the House of Lords bar for failing to attend a training course about modern behaviour; had they attended, their irascible Lordships would have learnt that it’s no longer acceptable to compliment a women on her attire. How many women do you know who would be deeply disappointed if no one noticed how beautiful they were looking and worse, failed to mention it?! Is this really the pretty pass we have reached; two elderly gentlemen who have given many years of loyal and dedicated service to their country and companies, denied the odd snifter or three for playing hookey from “school”. The really scary part is that the Upper House voted by a large majority to enforce the sanction. Perhaps they’re just not very popular!

Talking of nobility, I’m thinking of moving. Sussex by the sea is losing its lustre with the news that the “Duke of” is shortly to publish his tell-all memoirs. There we were, thinking we’d seen the back of him and Wallis Simpson Mark II and he ups and stuns everyone, not least the Royal Family, by doing the one thing that no member of the aforesaid brigade should ever do; for an obscene amount of money; which he might give to charity. Does that make it any better? Whatever has happened to a sense of duty? It has, of course, often been whispered that his Mother went elsewhere for the seed of her second son. Perhaps he doesn’t actually have blue blood at all….

Either way, in my humble opinion and risking a quick trip down the Thames to Traitor’s Gate, he deserves all the opprobrium that will no doubt be heaped upon his sloping shoulders. One can only assume that he has handed all his trousers over to Megan and now has a wardrobe full of kilts.

A charming friend (no, he really is), suggested the other day that as only the good die young, I could expect to live for a very long time. It got me thinking. Why would only the good die young? Is Heaven so short of buddies for the Boss that he has to snatch the righteous before their time? Or is he worried that if allowed to loiter too long on Planet Earth, Mr or Mrs Goodietwoshoes would be vulnerable to the wiles of Lucifer and might even end up going down instead of up? Is it because JC didn’t last long here before returning to the bosom of his family? It seems counter-intuitive to me. Surely it’s the really naughty who should bunk off prematurely and leave the genuinely wholesome to work their magic on this troubled globe?

I wonder what my parents would have thought if anyone had suggested that one day the country would be the victim of a Pingdemic. I suppose it’s marginally better than a Pongdemic….

Boris’s Brexit was going to be great news for Britain’s hard-pressed fishermen. Only it isn’t. I was given an interesting insight into what’s going on by the nice man in the shed that sells lovely fresh fish on Aldeburgh’s beach. He reckons our fishing industry will be dead and buried within ten years. Already the fleet is decimated compared with twenty or thirty years ago and the Government is reneging on most of its promises now, which will probably not come as a surprise to anyone. (As a pensioner, I am fully expecting that they will find a way to weasel out of the “triple lock” manifesto guarantee). I haven’t seen it anywhere in the national press, but apparently our noble leaders have issued 1,600 licences to continental fishermen (mainly French, Dutch and Scandinavian) allowing them to fish to within six miles of our coastline. Six miles! Before we joined the Common Market our territorial waters extended to two hundred miles! For the last ten years, eighty seven Dutch boats have been using an experimental electric stun technique that has all but destroyed the flat fish stocks around our shores. They were supposed to have only three boats. It’s been stopped now, but too late. Further, our own boats are now being fitted with surveillance equipment that will stop them doing anything that’s even vaguely against the regulations that will even more inhibit them from making a living. In Eastbourne, we have a wonderful beach “shed” (it’s quite a sophisticated shed) called Southern Head, which is like a proper old-fashioned fishmongers, but it’s right on the shore where the catch is landed; it couldn’t be much fresher. I’ve become a twice or thrice a week customer and it’s wonderful. The Westminster Village needs to spend more time in places like Eastbourne and Aldeburgh to realise what a tragedy the result of their policies will be.

That was unusually soapbox-like for me, but I was appalled by what the nice man in the shed had to say and deeply disappointed. On a much more positive note, as I sit and watch the 149th Open Golf Championship from sunny Royal St Georges, I have to tell you about a true hidden gem that I had the great pleasure of experiencing last week. Gems come in different shapes and sizes, colours and worth. This one was a multi-faceted diamond with bells on. I’m talking about the James Braid designed course at Thorpeness. I used the practice ground there last year without realising what an absolute masterpiece it is. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to play Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath on Melbourne’s sand belt. In both instances, as soon as you walk onto the grounds you realise you are on hallowed turf, where the golfing deity sprinkled its stardust to create Nirvana for those who enjoy the thwack of hickory on balata….or something. Thorpeness, whilst not a great Championship course like those, has a similar feel. It really is very special and I can’t wait to return; especially now that I have sorted out my swing and can hit the ball straight again. Well I could yesterday anyway.

MONDAY 19th JULY.

A long al fresco, sun and Pimms-drenched lunch precluded completion yesterday, although I’m struggling to find excuses for what happened between Thursday and then?!

James Braid, incidentally, was the third member of The Great Triumvirate that included Harry Vardon (six times a winner of The Open) and J H Taylor (like Braid an Open Champion five times.); all renowned British professionals who dominated the game around the turn of the 20th Century. Braid became a brilliant course designer, creating such iconic challenges as The King’s and Queen’s at Gleneagles and the 1926 re-design of Carnoustie….all great Scottish courses.

I’ve just had a net with my 6’3″ fifteen year old son showing me how he has gained a yard or two of pace recently. Either he is genuinely quicker or my eyes and reflexes are deteriorating rapidly; probably both actually. I found the middle of the bat three times, with the majority of deliveries either clipping the very edge of the willow and hastening to the virtual slip cordon or clean bowling me. It was a sobering experience. For those who say life begins at 70 please step aside while I whisper in your ear. Does anyone actually say that….?

Yesterday was the day that will be etched in British sporting history as the date when England’s footballers finally realised their potential and brought home a second major football trophy. The Queen has expressed her delight and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised a national holiday, with knighthoods for Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling and OBE’s for the whole team including the water carrier, coach driver, boot cleaner, locker room attendant, team photographer and the sculptor who will create statues of the entire squad to adorn the entrance to Wembley. Oh and not forgetting the MBE for Phil Foden’s hairdresser.

Yesterday was the day that will be etched in British sporting history as the date when England’s footballers once again failed to realise their full potential, succumbing to Italy in a crushing 1-0 defeat at Wembley in the final of the 2020 Euro Championships, with Harry Kane missing a last minute penalty that would have taken the game into extra time. Gareth Southgate was quick to praise the heroic efforts of his team and promises that they will go one better next time. Gracious in defeat, he couldn’t speak highly enough of the brilliant Italian team who will surely go on and conquer the world.

Please edit accordingly.

There are predictions that around thirty million people will be watching tonight’s final, in this country alone. There surely will be no better time to cycle the beautiful country lanes of Suffolk. The biggest danger will be unfettered badgers, wild boar, rabbits and muntjac roaming free as the hedgerows vibrate with the news that humankind is housebound and for a few glorious hours the highways and byways will be traffic free.

Both the 1966 World Cup Final and the Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales drew audiences of over thirty two million people in this country. Could tonight’s agathokakological encounter even pip those monumental occasions? Do we care? Prior to that, Joko takes on an Italian (whose name sounds like an early motor racing marque) in the Men’s Final at Wimbledon. Novak is currently quoted at 1/5 to win. That means you put on £5 to win £1. A much more rewarding gamble would be on a Matteo Berrettini victory, for which you can get the impressive odds of 4/1. That’s it then, game over, match decided, not even worth watching. Or could it be one of those rare, inexplicable sporting occasions when an inspired underdog contrives to neuter the overwhelming favourite and triumph on the greatest stage tennis has to offer? (Apparently). Remember 1975, when Jimmy Connors, the champion designate, was humbled by Arthur Ashe, still the only black man to have won Wimbledon? No Italian man has won a Grand Slam singles title since Adriano Panatta claimed the French Open in 1976. He was the man who proclaimed his distaste for Wimbledon with the memorable line “grass is for cows”. But could it also be for the big serving Berettini? Should Italy take Wimbledon and Wembley by storm on the same day, what will tomorrow’s newspapers look like!? Front pages framed in black……?

The Romans brought peace to this land. Such twin victories might have the opposite effect!

I watched an interesting audition on Wednesday evening, along with well over twenty million other Britons. I’m not sure if it was for a remake of The Hunt for Red October or for a partner for Tom Daley in the 10 metre synchro at the next Olympics, but both Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling would seem to be highly qualified for either, judging from their diving skills on display at Wembley. Kane appeared to spend more time prostrate than he did running around and missing penalties. Sterling is so adept at it that he even conned the referee into giving England the crucial penalty that saw them through to The Final on Sunday. Sadly, faking foul tackles seems to be an essential part of the modern football strikers armoury. Some call it gamesmanship; to me it is out and out cheating and should be met with a red card every time. Maybe that would dissuade the cheats. Call me old-fashioned.

Whilst shopping in the delightful little Suffolk town of Aldeburgh today I remarked that it was very crowded. Daughter Tiggy came straight back with a wonderfully descriptive phrase; “there isn’t space for it to be busy”. She’s just had her fourteenth birthday and is showing some interesting creative possibilities in photography, drama and dance. She did however admit that she thought Sherlock Holmes was a real character, that Alexander The Great wasn’t and that she hadn’t a clue what the Battle of Britain was. As she’s currently studying The Blitz in history at School, that last bit was particularly worrying. Where have I gone wrong? She did at least know that the Second World War finished before 1966, although her best stab was 1949.

We had a splendid day at Sutton Hoo this week. It’s the site of one of the most significant archaeological digs in this country. Fourteen hundred years ago an Anglo Saxon king was buried there and the artefacts that have been unearthed, most of which now reside in the British Museum are fascinating and priceless. It was particularly interesting to me to be reminded of our ancestry. With the Ancient Britons being pushed into the far outer extremities of Briton it was the intruders from Scandinavia, Germany and France predominantly who settled here. Like it or not, they are in our blood! (Frau Merkel and Monsieur Macron please take note). The other thing that became apparent was how slaves were an essential part of daily life. Our own kith and kin. Who knows perhaps you or I are descended from slaves? Should we tear down all statues and relics of our ancient history? I’m already feeling aggrieved.

Here’s hoping we beat up those nasty Italians at Wembley on Sunday night. After all, what did the Romans ever do for us……apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health……? Peace?!

I am delighted to record my first double century. I don’t believe I thought I would get this far when I started out on JaJa99. I did get quite close to 200 on a great cricket trip to Berlin many years ago. Playing for the Stragglers of Asia against The GOC’s XI on a superb pitch, second only to Lord’s, in the old Olympic Stadium in the British quarter I scored 179 on Saturday, followed by 111 on Sunday after only a few hours sleep. The night life in Berlin in the days before the Wall came down was unrivalled! They lived every day as if it was their last. The stupid thing with my first innings was that I was stumped off a wide flinging the bat, thinking that I was hogging the crease. In retrospect, I reckon I would have been justified in going for the double hundred. Major Hugh Lindsay was on the trip with us, at the time he was the Queen’s Equerry. Her Majesty might have been mildly amused/shocked to see how we spent that Saturday night! Cabaret had nothing on us.

We are currently on holiday in Thorpeness near Aldeburgh on the beautiful Suffolk coast. Having gone to Prep school in Southwold, a little north of here, there are many childhood memories to be revisited. On a walk around Framlingham Castle today with old friends from Hong Kong, we had an unusual experience. On the quietest of country lanes a motorcyclist on a very nice Honda CBR 500 cruised slowly past us before collapsing in a heap on the verge, with the bike on top of him. It transpired he was a very elderly gentlemen in leathers, who was clearly in shock and not entirely compos mentis. Once we’d lifted the bike off him, he didn’t appear to want any more help and was adamant he was going to ride on. Fortunately the bike wouldn’t start! Some passing locals volunteered to push it back to the garage he owns in the village. We spotted him later outside the garage getting into a Smart car. Perhaps it was as well that that wouldn’t start either! The large cobwebs on the wing mirrors did suggest it had been awhile since it had experienced forward momentum. Imagine meeting him coming the other way on a country lane!!

Tomorrow has the potential to be an interesting day. I am playing golf in the morning with son Oliver, which is always an event I approach with some trepidation (fathers of teenage boys will understand), while Alison is heading up the coast to go riding on the beach with daughter Tiggy, who loves horseback riding (as our transatlantic friends insist on calling it) but is relatively inexpert, unlikely her mother who used to be a very competent hunter and pony clubber but hasn’t been in the saddle for about thirty years. They say it’s like riding a bike, but I wonder if unfamiliar muscles will think that! I’ll let you know afterwards. It’s Tiggy’s fourteenth birthday on Tuesday. She was supposed to have been born on 7th July 2007 but arrived one day early. 070707 would have been a cool birth date and certainly an easy one to remember.

Both the offspring have decided their natural hair colouring is boring, so Oliver now has the front half and part of the rear of his head a delicate shade of orangey yellow. He’s also decided he wants a mullet, which I’ve always thought is the ugliest style imaginable. Still, if he wants to look a prat I guess that’s his choice. The most adventurous I ever got with hairstyles was trying to have a Beatle cut at the age of 11, but I had such frizzy, curly hair it never quite worked. I imagine I probably looked a prat too.

What a day. England stuffed Sri Lanka in the first One Day international, England overwhelmed (excuse the hyperbole) Germany in the Euro Championships and on the hallowed lawns of SW19, English players……. well, English players played. I’ve just been watching the highlights of England’s Fran Jones’s efforts to bring down the mighty 17 year old American sensation Coco Gauff. Jones’s every blow was accompanied by a doppler-like groan, emanating from deep within her chest and rising to a crescendo as the ball arrived on her opponent’s racket. At first hearing you might think she was in the final stages of orgasm but then it’s repeated time and again. Long rallies are reminiscent of a picnic on Watership Down. With all the skill of a seasoned observer, commentator Jo Durie opined “you can hear the effort she’s putting into it”. Yes Jo, we can and we sincerely wish we couldn’t! As statements of the blindingly obvious go, that was quite high up on the list. The vaguely good news is that Jones lost. The less good news is that there’s a fleet of other women (mainly) who are liable to progress to the later stages, wheezing and whooping their way to victory over fair-minded opponents who manage to hit the ball equally hard without a whimper. Whether or not it is off-putting to their opponents it makes watching with the sound turned down almost obligatory. From memory, Monica Seles was one of the early grunters, but I think Jimmy Connors might have been the first man. It does raise the question that if it’s so effective, why doesn’t everyone do it? Clearly it’s not something one does naturally, so we have to blame the coaches for this affront to one’s audio senses; and it’s only Day 2 at Wimbledon.

Whilst accompanying Callie on a stroll down the Prom this grey and dreek (great Scottish word) afternoon, I ended up pondering what one super-power or talent I would choose, should my lamp-rubbing produce a magic genie. What would you choose? A Clark Kent conversion? Wonder Woman? To fly like an eagle? Antman? Or perhaps to have the trumpeting skills of Alison Balsam or the ability to daub a canvas like Pablo Picasso? I went to a musical school where I was surrounded by hugely talented musicians. Ever since I have longed to be able to sit down and sight read a Chopin piano concerto without a mistake or pull up a stool at the pub Joanna and thrash out a melody of drunken requests by ear. I still think that would be my first ask of the genie, although perhaps it would just be to “live long and prosper”.

It’s been an interesting day. Son Oliver is on an expensive cricket tour where they played golf and swam because the cricket was rained off, Alison and daughter Tiggy departed for our holiday in Suffolk, where I should have been if Oliver hadn’t gone on an expensive cricket tour and I’ve been left with Callie and a house full of plumbers and electricians replacing a giant boiler that looks as though it may have been installed before England last beat Germany at soccer. The good news is that Callie neither answers back nor has stressy hissy fits, is immensely, tail-waggingly grateful for an hour’s romp in the woods and positively drools with appreciation when the bowl of biscuits and pork appears at the appropriate hour.

England are due to play……in next Saturday’s quarter final. Please insert either Sweden or Ukraine. It’s 10.15pm and they’ve only just started the second half of extra time. I’m off to bed.

As I was walking in the woods today, I did get a big surprise. I was accosted by a perfect stranger, the owner (or guardian, I didn’t wait to find out) of two rather large and threatening looking bulldogs. Certainly Callie wasn’t overly excited by their presence so after exchanging the obligatory meteorological pleasantries I moved swiftly on. At which point I pondered on why he was a ‘perfect’ stranger. Who was I to judge? I hadn’t checked his hands for stigmata, but he didn’t look like someone who’d spent hours attached to a cross. ‘Complete’ then? Was I any better qualified to assess his wholeness? ‘Total’ perhaps? That’s better, but does ‘stranger’ need qualifying at all? Is it not like ‘unique’? Either we’ve met before, in which case he’s not a stranger, or we haven’t and he is. I’m sure Bertrand Russell would be proud of me!

We heard last week from an ’eminent’ (apparently) research scientist, who was proud to announce that they had proved categorically that it’s impossible to lead a healthy life if you’re obese. No shit Sherlock! How much did that earth-shattering research cost I wonder? Just out of curiosity I’ve been conducting a totally unscientific survey whilst cruising the highways and byways of this sceptred isle, totting up the very rough ratio of overweight people to those with an athletic build. Do try it, you may be taken aback by the numbers. Typically I reckon it’s something like 6 to 1, but that will obviously vary considerably according to one’s environment. I know I’ve plugged it before, but if you haven’t yet read Eat to Beat Disease by Dr William Li, you really should. It could and probably will change your life. By following his ideas I have lost over two stone in about three months, totally effortlessly and very pleasurably, without any calorie counting or other traditional weight loss methods. As a result I am back playing tennis three times a week (tennis elbow permitting), hockey training games and even cricket. I played for Eastbourne Cricket Club’s 3rd XI on Saturday (they were desperately short) and kept wicket for forty overs, for the first time in about thirty years. I was only slightly stiff yesterday! It was a great game which we won by one wicket in a thrilling finish, in which I played my part, producing life-giving doses of oxytocin; all because of Dr Li.

Experts like to talk about the dangers of this or that pandemic, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers etc etc. The biggest epidemic facing our world today is without doubt obesity and our dreadful nutrition that causes it.

The recent torrential thunderstorms are not the only cause of much water flowing under the bridge since my last communique. The last week or two of a school summer term are invariably hectic and this is no exception. I also took the opportunity while I could of another whistle stop tour of Wessex, wherein much of my heart lies, having lived near Bath for twenty five years. It coincided with a TV programme about “The Reluctant Royals”, Prince Edward and Sophie who chose to be the Earl and Countess of Wessex, apparently because of the association with ‘Shakespeare in Love’, one of Edward’s favourite films; a true thespian. It also leaves room for him to succeed the late Duke of Edinburgh as the Duke of Edinburgh. Having observed what a charming and sensible couple they seem, that would surely be a worthy honour and one his father would have approved of. Of course Wessex, per se, no longer exists, but it has such a romantic history in literature that it seems a shame to lose it entirely. If we can have East Anglia, why not Wessex?

Yesterday, it transpired, was Father’s Day. I had no idea until my gorgeous daughter produced the most lovely handmade card with beautiful poetic words that sent a shiver down my spine. The fact it was accompanied by a box of After Eight was neither here nor there! Coincidentally I had recently heard Alexander Armstrong on Classic FM discussing the merit of deep freezing such mints, so it has been an ideal opportunity to experiment. He’s quite right. It makes them a bit chewy and utterly delicious….as I’m sure son Oliver will attest to! I have a technical hitch at the moment so this will be in two parts; more to come