Where has the week gone! I have crossed the border into 69 territory, the family gave me a fabulous genuine Indian Kadai Fire Pit and BBQ which will give lasting pleasure and the lockdown rules have been tempered somewhat. The car parks in the local Forestry England woods have been re-opened and the great unwashed have returned to enjoy the sprawling outdoors. The lunacy of closing them in the first place is clear for all to see; hundreds can gather there without any danger of passing within yards of anyone else and the efficacious nature of the exercise far outweighs whatever infinitesimal chance there is of contracting COVID. It was amusing to witness on opening day though, how the cars were neatly lined up at least two metres apart. Thank heavens Ford and BMW are familiar with the rules.

Whilst cogitating upon the vanity of human wishes this morning some rather good questions occurred to me for dinner table amusement, should we ever return to the aforementioned place of dining. Question 1: Assuming lockdown continues for a considerable period of time, who is the one person in the world that you would choose to get out and spend time with? Question 2: Assuming lockdown continues for a considerable period of time, who is the one person in the world that you would choose to get and spend time with, that you would be happy to admit to in front of your partner?! Question 3: Assuming lockdown continues etc etc, who is the one person in the world that you would choose to remain barricaded in for, to avoid any chance of meeting?

It would be totally unworthy of me to go public with my answer to any of those, added to which I would undoubtedly offend more than one person. Suffice to say, I suspect that those involved in the answers to questions one and two will probably know and there are no doubt any number of people who might think they qualify for question three.

During my thirty odd years of travelling the world and dining out with my colleagues from television, we have had innumerable lively and often quite heated debates, inevitably fuelled by a glass or three of generally fairly average and overpriced wine. One of the most memorable evenings though was in the Middle East when I posed this question, that demanded a totally honest response from each person in turn. Question: “How do you perceive yourself and how do you think others perceive you?” As you may imagine it produced some very interesting answers! An even more illuminating one, although not everyone was prepared to answer this, was: “How many skeletons do you have in the cupboard and what are they?!”. Most people were remarkably honest which made for some lurid and highly entertaining conversation. I suspect everyone was hoping that the rest were sufficiently drunk that they wouldn’t remember in the morning! One of our number quite genuinely felt he didn’t have any skeletons. He’s either a helluva good liar or very boring.

Tomorrow is the 50th birthday of an old friend of mine who definitely qualifies as one of my many skeletons. Her wife’s brother is the father of her child. It’s a tangled web……

Boris has spoken, all is now clear. We’re to Stay Alert, because lurking around every corner there might be a Russian or Chinese spy. We know that BJ is a huge admirer of good old Winnie, but sadly he doesn’t have quite the exceptional powers of oratory that so elevated our great wartime leader. You can hear Sir Winston (actually still just Winston then) exhorting the British people to treat every stranger as a Fifth Columnist, a potential German informer who might scupper the whole invasion plan. It was hard enough spotting a German in a group of anglo-saxons or discerning an IRA terrorist embedded amongst loyal supporters of the Crown. How much harder then in “Staying Alert” to the threat of an unseen, unheard, unfelt, unsmelt, determined enemy which could be anywhere and everywhere?

TTT is the answer. Test, Track and Trace. This theory has had me slightly confused in that I wasn’t sure what the difference between Track and Trace was. So, Google to the rescue; “when used as verbs, trace means to follow the trail of, whereas track means to observe the (measured) state of a person or object over time”. This suggests to me that our great scientific thinkers who seem to be running the country now have got things the wrong way round. Should they not be tracing before tracking? I merely ask the question. Being a bear of very little brain compared with the great intellectuals organising all this I am obviously missing something?

Back to Boris and the good news emanating from No.10 is that golf and tennis are back on the agenda, obviously with strict social distancing in place. In golf this should be quite easy. For the most part you only ever get close to your fellow competitor at the start and end of each hole, especially the golf I play nowadays and it shouldn’t be too difficult to maintain a seventy eight inch separation. Apart from the flagstick no mutual touching is required and Clubs are introducing rules that alleviate the necessity to handle even that. It’s disappointing that the last seven weeks of glorious sunshine have passed without a single shot being hit in anger, but hopefully there will be a few more sunny days on the horizon. When it comes to tennis, the days of sharp volleying rallies must go on the back burner and there’s no question of chairs being too close together at the net. Beware too of sharing towels or water bottles although as we’re only supposed to be beating up members of our own household, I guess there’s no real harm in that. The other danger is the gate latch to get onto the court and the handle to wind the net up. No one seems to know how long the infernal virus can linger on metal for? Stay Alert and that should prevent any problems.

In a mere three days I shall be 69. I’ll have a whole twelve months to enjoy the pleasures of still being a sixty something before my allotted three score and ten are up. 69 is a good score in golf……

Hooray hooray the Fifth of May, outdoor bonking starts today. Actually it’s supposed to be the First of May, but such is the nature of this infernal lockdown that I’ve been asleep for the last five days. Today is definitely not suitable for uncovered coupling. It’s chilly and very windy and more conducive to sheepskin rugs in front of a roaring log fire. The fact that we have neither shouldn’t be a deterrent.

How things change in these uncertain times. SD has taken on a whole new meaning. In my military days SD stood for Service Dress; Full SD meant get on your ceremonial uniform, look smart, salute often and keep saying “sir”. (As a vaguely interesting aside which has just come back to me, the Regiments of Footguards, like the Grenadiers and Coldstream Guards, always just say “Sir”, when they mean “yes Sir”. It’s delivered in a clipped and positive manner. It’s an indication of compliance to an order. They have all sorts of strange regimental customs and traditions that helped us to run a vast empire and win wars.) I digress. Of course SD now stands for Social Distancing, which strikes me as being something of a misnomer: rather like “social media”. What could be more Anti-social than, as you approach your old mate of twenty years who you haven’t seen for months, taking a huge sidestep to ensure that the statutory seventy eight inch separation is maintained? Shaking hands becomes impossible, even if safely gloved. Intimate conversation is equally inappropriate (how common that word has become; it didn’t exist when I was young) as we shout across the ether at each other. I’m even contemplating carrying a loudhailer to communicate with my more hard of hearing friends.

I’ve been doing a bit of research these past few days for a Remembrance Concert script that I’m partly responsible for. We’re focussing on D Day through to VE Day and it’s absolutely mind-boggling the hardships and deprivation that so many people suffered for so long, not to mention the size of the Operations and the planning and preparation that went into it. As I heard a survivor discussing on the radio this morning, what we are going through now is a mere drop in the oggin compared to what our forebears went through. This individual had been a youngster in a gruesome “death camp” in Czechoslovakia. They heard the news of Germany’s capitulation on a secret radio that some of the Russian prisoners had somehow kept hidden and managed to make work. They listened to Churchill’s famous victory speech and realised that there were still six hours to go before the official surrender at midnight. Whilst elated, they were also fearful that the bitter and twisted Nazi guards would unleash their hatred of the Jews and kill all of them before they could be rescued. The Russian Army that liberated them passed quickly through, fearful of catching nasty diseases from the bug-ridden shells of humanity that they found. Fortunately, unlike in other camps where generous saviours had overfed and thereby killed the emaciated survivors, in this camp they were given very little food initially, which allowed their stomachs to grow back to normal without exploding.

I confess, hearing that, allied with all my reading, I realised things aren’t actually so bad after all. That nice roast chicken I cooked last night will make a delicious salad lunch.

There was a piece in the Times Weekend section entitled “How to deal with a patchy lawn”. Call for John Wayne, I thought? Round up a posse? Or perhaps just Sioux the law-nmakers. The answer was rather more mundane: buy some lawn seed and topsoil and fill in the patches. They also suggested raising the cutters for the first mow, which should be about now. What?! If I hadn’t cut my grass in late January we’d be living in a jungle by now. What planet are these people on? Actually because of three precipitation-free weeks the grass hasn’t grown as much as it might otherwise have done at this time of year, but we know we’ll be paying for the Almighty’s heartwarming largesse; the rain is coming.

I’m quite excited though because I did invest in some quality grass seed; all part of our major garden rejuvenation programme that’s been possible thanks to the enforced Covid imprisonment. What were once beautiful borders had become overgrown sculptures of twisted climbers, creepers, delvers and all sorts of other miscreants. Previous caretakers of the Watt House estate had preferred knitting and crochet to digging and clipping. Our mission therefore, which we eventually chose to accept, was to strip everything back to the bare bones and start again. The first part of our exploration into deep space took over two years, with much spraying and general slaughter. Finally, with this time afforded us by the Chinese, we’ve been able to cultivate, propagate, sow and fertilise. Part of this process has involved nuking some of the borders, flattening them and turning them into lawn. The exciting bit is that there are more than green shoots. After just a few days of light but frequent watering, there is clear evidence of nascent lawns. Ok, not fit for Nadal or Federer to joust upon but definitely greensward.

One significant and ongoing phase of this operation is The Battle of The Ivy. I’m not referring to fine dining, merely the daunting prospect of stripping out many years of growth of Holly’s partner. It’s EVERYWHERE and so destructive. The lovely wall that borders the garden on all sides is suffering badly and one section of six feet has now collapsed, aided it should be said by some virulent laurel that’s grown through the wall from our neighbour’s garden. That’s for the chop too! (The laurel, not our neighbour) It’s my declared aim to have rid the whole garden of the infernal weed by the time we leave here in 2026, give or take. I’ve recorded a lot of significant early success, but you just know that the vicious stuff is there, lurking below the surface, ready to pounce when your back is turned. Oh the joys of gardening. Still I did read the other day that gardeners have a much more diverse microbiome than knitters and crocheters and that’s a good thing; all those little mites rushing around inside the gut apparently improve our health no end and encourage the immune system to function correctly. A good thing that, with all these nasty bugs around.

The other horticultural battle has been moss. It’s especially widespread this year for some reason. Perhaps because I’ve relieved Green Thumb of their duties. I might have to re-instate them. Meanwhile, maybe the Rolling Stones could help?

I am concerned that this infernal Lockdown might be affecting my mind………

It’s another shitty day in Paradise. Our endless days of internment continue with unabated blue skies and powerful rays of sunshine encouraging an indolence that requires a presently absent strength of will to overcome. In other words, breakfast, coffee and the paper on the patio, with no immediate rush to gravitate to anything more productive!

This might not sound like a show-stopper, but I heard an aeroplane overhead yesterday. It was a fast jet and too high to see, probably a Typhoon. It did occur to me though that it might have been a MiG? Supposing the Russians had sussed that we are in total lockdown, that the Brylcreem Boys, rather than being fully booted and spurred in their usual state of Instant Readiness, were in fact lounging in the Officers’ Mess, feet up, doing The Times crossword and oblivious to any enemy intrusion into our airspace? Supposing those nasty commies were just dipping their toes in the water, to see if the normal “scramble” of Eurofighter Typhoons launched into the stratosphere to warn them off and found there were no traffic police, no hindrance to their progress? What then? Would they then feel safe in launching a full aerial bombardment, sending in squadrons of heavy bombers to pepper our fair and native land with a Pandora’s box load of virus-neutralising nukes? Could it in fact be that the Ruskies are in cahoots with their like-minded Chinese friends, who released the bug so that we’d all drop our defences and allow the Russian Bear to unleash it’s holocaustic venom upon our unsuspecting populace?

As a young officer in the RAF Regiment, I spent a hideously tedious three months in Northern Ireland based at RAF Aldergrove outside Belfast. We were tasked with defending the base from unwanted intruders. As a shift commander I was based for twelve hours at a time in a small, over-crowded, smelly Guardroom, surrounded by radios and squawk boxes, flak jackets, rubber bullets and all sorts of other paraphernalia. These were the days, in the early 1970s, when the Cold War was still freezing, when the Nuclear Threat was still very real, when acronyms like MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) were on everyone’s lips and when it was considered that we would get a four minute warning of incoming missiles. To this end, there was a box in the corner that sent out a load beep every 10 seconds (I think, from memory) that was supposed to comfort us that all was well. If ever the beep stopped, our whole world was about to vaporise and we had barely four minutes to run round in ever-decreasing circles, shouting Hail Mary’s and going MAD. I never did find out what the infernal box was connected to…..it might have been a tape on a constant loop in the next door room! (Actually I do know, but I signed the Official Secrets Act and I’d have to kill you if I told you).

Meanwhile….. perhaps it really was a Typhoon on a training sortie, flying a different navex route just to keep the boys sharp? Maybe I’ve been reading too much Aldous Huxley and George Orwell? Still, it’s as well to be prepared. You can’t be too careful these days. I’ve been doing a lot of digging recently (literally not psychologically) so perhaps I should go a lot deeper and create a family shelter; bomb proof and virus proof, perfect for prolonged quarantine?

Oh sod it, back to the patio and another coffee; decaffeinated of course.

In No 112, I mentioned “elevenses” (with a flippant aside) thinking that everyone would know what elevenses are. Wrong. My twelve year old daughter came into the kitchen at 10.30 this morning saying she would make herself some porridge for a late breakfast. “But you’ve already had breakfast” says I. “I know but that was a bowl of cereal in bed much earlier”. “Right, well at least wait for half an hour and you can have it for elevenses”. “What are they?” At which point I felt we had failed our daughter.

A significant side effect of Lockdown is the dramatically increased household food expenditure. A number of parents have been commenting on anti-social media about this.  It seems three hearty meals a day are no longer enough. Our two monsters are constantly grazing, in and out of the fridge, the larder and anywhere else they think some food might be lurking. Combined with reduced levels of exercise, the impact is clear for all to see.

I find my frustration, even anger levels rising every day. It’s the most beautiful time of year. The countryside is looking stunning. The hedgerows are a cascade of white hawthorn and buckthorn blossom, interspersed with the vivid yellow of gorse. The bursting beech woods are carpeted with bluebells. The hillsides of The Sussex Downs are alive with the bleating of thousands of newborn lambs, their mothers scattered across the rolling green pastures like a multitude of gulls bobbing on the ocean. With it’s major makeover our garden is equally beautiful. But College Field opposite our house is deserted, looking unloved and unkempt with all the groundstaff furloughed. What should be reverberating to the sound of leather on willow is eerily silent. The fresh-faced youths, just starting out on life’s big adventure are absent, housebound and probably moribund in some cases. It’s them I feel so sorry for. These should be the most exciting of times, the fabulously memorable years of their lives.

I can’t help feeling that we’ve got this all wrong. In 1968, at the end of the Lent Term, I got a really nasty bout of Hong Kong Flu, along with lots of other boys at School. They converted one of the Boarding Houses into a Sanatorium, which had to keep going beyond the end of term. I had a temperature of 105 degrees for three days, with constant bed changes, I was sweating so much. It was hideous, but we survived and the nation didn’t come to a grinding halt. I accept that COVID 19 is not flu, but nonetheless it’s a relatively small percentage of those affected who suffer badly and a very small percentage who die. The treatment is going to be dramatically worse than the cure for so many, particularly the younger generations.

With almost miraculous speed Nightingale hospitals have been created with vast Intensive Care facilities, which are apparently now sitting largely unused. Why can’t we have dedicated centres like these around the country as specific COVID treatment centres, leaving other hospitals to do the work which they normally do, without fear of coronavirus infection? Work that is now backing up so badly that the unintended consequences will be felt for years to come.

The elderly and vulnerable can continue to properly self-isolate and we should do everything to help them, but let the rest of the world get back to work.

Time for elevenses and a couple of cookies.

When I was a wee lad we used to have biscuits for elevenses (that’s sort of vaguely mid-morning, hence the name) and teatime, which was typically about 4 o’clock. At some point in my burgeoning adulthood, biscuits became cookies because that’s what Americans called them; makes sense. Then the internet overtook our lives. Now it’s impossible to go onto any website without an irritating and invasive pop-up telling you that the site operates with cookies because these enable it to track your heart’s desires, conduct market research, help advertisers know how their ads are doing and sometimes even tell the truth that in fact they are mining all sorts of data that can be used to “help” you in future; or perhaps even be used in a more sinister fashion. I find myself increasingly alienated by cookies, which is a shame because nowadays practically every site you try, from NHS to RHS, from Tesco to Unesco and The Times to “who was…?” is infected with the Cookie virus. Almost invariably I now decline their kind offer and give up, which can’t be what the website owners really want, surely?

Talking of the Thunderer, I wonder if you spotted an inside page story a few days ago about MPs’ expenses? This was not another “Duck house” scandal but the revelation that in addition to their regular Office Budget of £26,000 per annum, MPs are to get an extra £10,000 for working from home, to cover the purchase of equipment such as laptops (really? they don’t have laptops….) printers, additional electricity,  heating and phone bills. I wonder if everyone else who’s working from home is getting similar allowances?! They won’t be claiming travel costs, presumably?

The unambiguously named Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which was established after the last expenses scandal to stop MPs cheating the public, has not only condoned this largesse but seems to be encouraging it. All this comes after a recent £20 million increase in MPs staffing budgets. Last year, a Sunday Times investigation revealed that MPs claimed 22 per cent more in expenses than they did in 2009, when IPSA was established. Does that all sound rather cosy? Apparently in 2017-2918, the total claimed by MPs rose to a record £116 million. That’s not a typo; £116 million, at an AVERAGE of £178,461.54p per Member. Are we getting value for money I can hear nurses, dustmen, and schoolteachers shouting all around the country. At least they would if any half decent journalist spelt it out for them. This, remember, is on top of the basic MPs salary of £81,932.

There was one slightly confusing sentence in The Times article; “the extra money will be available until March”. The article appeared in the April 9th edition. Do they mean next March? That would be generosity beyond even Jeremy Corbyn’s imaginings.

Now, where did I put that custard cream cookie……

In what promises to be a thrilling Saturday duel in Augusta, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy will tee off last in the pairing everyone wanted to see, tied at 14 under par and leading by an incredible seven shots. Beautiful dreamer…..

In the week where Georgia should have been on my mind, the only Masters I’ll be watching are those who will be tentatively reappearing at School to work out how the hell all this online learning is going to work. Judging by the steady stream of expletives emanating from Mrs T’s direction, there are a few obstacles to overcome. Laying my new brick patio is a cinch in comparison and the weather and blossom is reminiscent of the finest days at Augusta National.

Remember Brexit? That was the ridiculous campaign to take Britain out of the safe, comfortable, well-managed free trade zone known as the European Union, where twenty eight totally disparate countries melded into a single, slick economic miracle, so that we could plough a lone furrow in the choppy waters of international trade, without the comfort blanket of the European Central Bank and the unimpeachable assistance of large numbers of highly paid, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Oops. The torrent of domestic COVID updates means you may have missed the fact that Europe is in turmoil, with a capital T. The wealthy Germans, Dutch and Finns etc are , quite outrageously, objecting to the Union scrapping all it’s “Red Line” rules in an attempt to keep Italy, Spain, Greece and even France out of the debtors prison. According to all the informed sources that I read there are only two solutions; either a full merging to become a Federal Europe (unlikely) or KERPOOF, the whole sandy edifice comes crashing down like the World Trade Centre. For my money, we can’t get out fast enough. With our own currency and Central Bank, we will have a better chance than most of emerging from the next Great Depression with the ship still afloat, even if the bulk of the super-structure has been blown away, the Figurehead has disappeared and we’re holed below the waterline.

In my helicopter flying days, when maintaining visual contact with the ground was de rigeur (unless you were under the positive radar control of a nice, helpful air traffic controller) we were taught early on about the dangers of “suckers’ gaps”; those holes in the cloud base that would tempt you to fly up through them, only to discover that they had closed up behind you and suddenly there was nothing to see below you but a mass of disconcerting white. Oops again.  Don’t be fooled in these troubled times by market rallies. It’s typical bear market behaviour and it’s very likely indeed that markets still have a scarily long way to fall. In the last Great Depression ninety odd years ago, the Dow Jones Industrial index fell over 80% from its peak. If that should happen again, in round figures, the Dow would drop to 6,000. It’s currently at about 23,500 having hiccuped its way down from roughly 29,500. Oops again, but this time BIG OOPS! This pandemic is what market watchers like to call a “Black Swan” event, presumably because it’s pretty unusual. Only this one might not be unusual; it could well be unique. Dig out the parachutes.

With the biggest pile of elephant poo the world has ever seen, would you want The Donald as your mahout? Triple oops. As Westlife implored, I’m quite keen to see what life is like on Jupiter and Mars…..perhaps with the help of Richard Branson?

Just when we REALLY need the Spring cheer of blushing azaleas and Augusta green, they’ve locked and bolted the doors and left us with eternal Sky Sports re-runs of previous glories. Assuming that you haven’t cancelled your subscription.

 

Such is my distancing (social or otherwise) from the days of my youth when Christianity was forced down my throat, that it completely passed me by that yesterday was Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. I used to take issue with those folk who would say “how can you believe in a God that allows this or that awful thing to happen?”. I would dismiss their arguments with the bravado that it was merely the Almighty testing our resolve. For millions of Christians around the Globe this is probably the most important week in their calendar. I find myself now asking the same question. If He or She does exist I would like to tell her/him that this is a step too far in the resolve-testing stakes. (In case this gem of contemporary prose should be selected for a Time Capsule that will only be unearthed in hundreds of years time, I refer to the fact that our English Castles, which once defended us from assailants, are now our prisons thanks to a thing called Coronavirus or COVID 19, which the Chinese have kindly donated to the world. It’s currently got our reigning Prime Minister hospitalised, although he remains “in full control of Government”. I can’t help thinking that things get more dangerously bonkers everyday.) (For the pedants, I know a Prime Minister doesn’t reign, but I didn’t want to use “current” twice in the same sentence)

My morose mood has darkened considerably this morning having just heard the one-time Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair pontificating about how The Government should govern. When will he get it into his thick skull that we don’t care what he thinks? It’s a shame that he didn’t legalise euthanasia when he had the chance. It seems even more inappropriate for him to be rabbiting on when Labour have just elected a new leader, who surely should be given every chance to make his mark without the assistance of previous failures. (Well ok, he did do some good things). Let’s hope that JC (the Marxist not the son of God) will now ride off into a silent sunset, being sure not to go the wrong way down a one-way street!

This is the last week of our School holidays (I know it’s different for other schools). In a week’s time Oliver and Tiggy will be going back to a virtual College. As the Girls’ House in which we have a flat is deserted, Oliver has set up a very neat “classroom” in the Music Room, whilst Tiggy has organised a most impressive work station in the middle of the girls’ Common Room. If their work is half as impressive as their preparation they will do ok! Meanwhile Alison is already beavering away diligently on preparing her online lessons. It’s a use of modern technology that’s quite beyond me, but thankfully I can just put up my slippered feet, light the pipe, put on my expensive Bang and Olufsen headphones (generous gift from wife) and listen to a steady stream of calming Mozart and Strauss……in my dreams. The reality, of course, is rather different.

Now where’s my donkey? Hopefully it’s not too late to catch up with JC. (Not the Marxist)

I started writing this on 1st April, but decided that was foolish. I hadn’t intended to leave it this long before bursting into print again, but we are just so hectic in this period of splendid isolation. It’s weird how we seem to have so little time now that we have lots of time. Are you finding that?

Don’t you hate jobsworths? Just in case you are not familiar with the term, they are the truly irritating gate guards you find at all sorts of sporting and other occasions who say “I’d love to let you in ‘Guv, but it’s more than my jobs worth”. I reserve a special brand of sarcastic insult for them. But how about the self-righteous, do-gooding, dog in the manger neighbourhood sneak? I’m not sure which one is more worthy of my vitriol. However, when you put the two together there is no torrent of abuse too violent to hurl in their direction. You may gather that I have fallen victim to two such this afternoon. Sadly I can’t go into more detail, but hopefully I have said enough to elicit your deepest sympathy? All that, in conjunction with living with a control freak for whom perfect will never be good enough and you will realise that I really am in need of some TLC! (I’ll be in trouble if she ever reads this!). I reckon an extended period of eschewing laundry, cooking and housework MIGHT register in the distaff brainbox? One of my early bosses in the RAF said “Julian, when you get married be sure and drop two or three plates early on and hopefully you’ll be excused washing up for life”!

I learnt a new word today, listening to the ever educational BBC Radio 4; Arborglyphs. It describes the often ancient art of carving shapes and symbols into the bark of living trees. The presenters were walking amongst the giant oaks of Epping Forest and came across the royal cypher of Tudor times which indicated that particular tree was suitable for felling to build galleons sturdy enough to sort out the invading Spanish….or French, or whoever it was then. Having inquired of Wikipedia, I find there are also dendroglyphs and silvaglyphs. They seem to fall under the same bracket, but I’ve no idea of the differences. If you care enough, the internet will no doubt give up its long hidden treasures. My tooth is now too long to investigate further.

For those who need such information laid before them on a plate, a week today is Good Friday.  (That designation has always struck me as odd; why would the day commemorating the assassination of Christ be considered ‘good’? Surely Easter Sunday should be ‘Good Sunday’? No doubt the students of the scriptures amongst you will instantly be able to put me right. Is it something to do with the absolution of our sins? I also need help remembering whether Friday or Sunday is the official end of Lent? This is quite important, because I have successfully negotiated the days and nights in the wilderness (so far) without allowing a drop of the hard stuff to pass my lips and I’m quite keen to try out that delicious vintage Taylor’s that’s lurking in a large decanter behind me. I would hate to break my vow of abstinence two days early, if it should be Easter Sunday. No doubt the situation will be clarified as we near the moment critique.

Meanwhile I am drowning in seas of decaffeinated coffee, herbal tea and……water. It’s been an illuminating experience having H2O with one’s supper. I wish I could report that I feel better for it………