England beat India but lose to Scotland. I am talking cricket and rugby of course. Had you been bold enough to bet that as a double with the bookies you would have made a small fortune. India are the best team in the world at the moment and are hot after beating Australia in Oz. Scotland haven’t beaten England at Twickenham for 38 years. The wonderful vagaries of sport.

For the first time in awhile England have a head cricket coach who is English, Chris Silverwood and by all accounts he’s doing a great job. He is working with some greatly talented players and a lovely mix of vast experience and raw emerging talent. They have the potential to be one of the great English test teams. England’s rugby team is coached by Eddie Jones, an Australian with a reputation for no nonsense and getting things done. His win/loss ratio is more than acceptable but the nature of those wins leaves much to be desired. His dogmatic coaching style seems to be stripping a talented bunch of individuals of any creative flair and original thought. Their inability, or reluctance, to think on their feet and adapt if the pre-programmed plan isn’t working is proving catastrophic. Could it be that it’s all a dastardly plan by Rugby Australia? Have they infiltrated a double agent into the highest echelons of the English game? Is there a Brazilian vaccine for sportsmen?

I suppose it’s understandable the way that foreigners can accept the filthy lucre to come and manage Premier League football teams but how can they sell their souls to manage our National teams? How can Jacques Kallis, one of South Africa’s greatest all-rounders who’s presence in the England Squad hierarchy must be greatly welcomed, how can he give his all to England, especially when they come to take on South Africa?

Talking of that fair land, a medic friend tells me that they have just received a million doses of the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine only to learn that it might be ineffective against the SA mutation. It’s distribution has been halted pending further investigation. They’ll need to be quick though; the vaccine is time expired in April! What a costly misfortune that might be.

Returning to sport, the papers have been drooling about Joe Root’s performance as England captain and batsmen extraordinaire, whilst delivering a shower of darts into Owen Farrell’s back for his lacklustre role as captain and player. Former England captain Michael Atherton’s excellent article in The Times today ends with these words: “This was a great victory for England’s players, but also for supporters too; locked down and miserable in the middle of a freezing snap, the country woke to a memorable story and to a group of young men playing with intelligence, skill, vision and charm”. One can only hope that such qualities will return soon to our national XV.

Whilst listening to “On your farm” on BBC Radio 4 (a staple for many generations) I learned an interesting and quite surprising fact. The UK is the proud possessor of 13% of the World’s blanket bogs. Without knowing what that is, it’s still impressive to know that we have 13% of anything on the global stage. I was trying to visualise a marsh covered in rugs, but that didn’t seem very likely. Perhaps it is an outside loo where a warming cover is required? Improbable. Having ventured across Rannoch Moor in Scotland years ago I had an inkling what it might be. Rannoch Moor is the only official area of wilderness in Britain and it was beautiful, but boggy. I was with my first wife Patti, a Canadian who loved the great outdoors, and our beautiful chocolate lab Balu who was in doggy heaven until he stumbled in the bog and injured a leg. There was nothing to do but carry him out. With three miles or so left of our nine mile trek, my shoulders were quite sore by the time we reached civilisation. He wasn’t a light dog.

Wikipedia has come to the rescue, as it so often does. (It wasn’t available for the dog rescue sadly). “Blanket bog or blanket mire, also known as featherbed bog, is an area of peatland, forming where there is climate of high rainfall and a low level of evapotranspiration”. I can’t be sure if the Wiki contributor made that up but it is, I confess, a word with which I am unfamiliar. Upon further investigation it seems Northern Ireland is responsible for about 8% of the total with the rest enhancing the majestic Scottish Highlands. I can attest from personal experience that both places are wet; very wet. Still, it’s no less wet on England’s south coast just now as we negotiate the drabbest few months of the year. The Scots have a great word for weather like this; dreek. It’s more effective said with a Scottish accent.

So our little land has roughly one eighth of all the peat on Earth. How amazing is that? If only the French and Germans had a greater need for peat, we would have a handy weapon in our bid to avoid Splendid Isolation after Brexit. Unfortunately the green brigade have ruled that we can’t dig up anymore anyway as it’s a vital store of CO2 and further excavation would merely hasten our Global Warming demise. I wonder where the other 87% of peat bogs are? Further reference to Wikipedia suggests there are a lot in Scandinavia with Finland, Scotland and Ireland being the only countries that dig peat for fuel. There is one interesting bog at Windover in Florida, where archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of bodies that were buried there around 6,000 B.C. That was awhile before the American War of Independence. No wonder Native Americans want to scalp the white man!

Isn’t it amazing how we spent our youth playing Cowboys and Indians. Talk about such things now and people think you’re talking about rogue builders and curry restaurants.

What’s the difference between 99 and 100, or 999,999 and 100,000? You don’t need to be Einstein to know that the answer in both cases is 1. But what a hugely significant 1 that is. When the number of people who have died from Covid 19 in this country reached the nice round figure, the BBC and other news organisations went into paroxysms of delight, inundating us with innumerable facts, figures and stories from the poor people who have been tragically bereaved. If the news wasn’t depressing enough already this was a wonderful opportunity for Huw Edwards and his colleagues to go into melancholic overdrive. Conversely, when a batsman scores a century it’s an occasion for great rejoicing and jubilation, setting the statisticians into a frenzy as they gurgle with pleasure about another milestone reached and what this means in the cricketing sportisphere. Get out for 99 and there’s a certain amount of sympathy and much disappointment, but the feat is worth nothing in the record books. It is of course entirely logical, after all there has to be a demarcation line somewhere, but it does seem a bit harsh. I recall playing for MCC against Ryde School on the Isle of Wight many moons ago. I opened the batting in the morning and was into the 90’s with lunch approaching. It was always noteworthy to score 100 before lunch. But I was so eager to still be batting after lunch that I blocked out the last over before the interval against an extremely innocuous leg spinner who I had been smashing all round the ground. I came back after lunch expecting to make my first century for MCC, but the break in concentration meant I was easily caught off the same unchallenging bowler; a situation I have kicked myself for ever since. A century has become such a milestone, that batsmen and commentators talk about the “nervous nineties” and so it’s become quite a test of mental fortitude and courage to score the last few runs needed to reach three figures. It’s amazing though how often, in the post climax euphoria, batters get out very soon after making their “ton”.

“The corridors of power” is an old saying and its meaning is obvious, but we had a first hand view of its extraordinary significance watching the inauguration of President Biden. With unfettered access to the inner sanctums of the White House one couldn’t help but marvel at the grandeur and history of the place, made more real by the presence of so many former Presidents and their wives, engaged in jolly conversation about who knows what? Wouldn’t we love to! You get the same sensations and tingling spine when walking around the Palace of Westminster, where once Tony Blair was such a revered figure. How interesting then that this week his son Euan has been revealed as a serious multi-millionaire after entrepreneurially founding a company to encourage businesses to start apprenticeships for school leavers, rather than them spending what is quite often a useless three years at a minor university. It was his Father Tony who led the charge to turn perfectly good Polytechnic Colleges into Universities so that everyone could have the chance of gaining a degree. I would venture to suggest that it’s been apparent for years, to anyone with half a brain, that this was a ludicrous project and that many people are much happier and better equipped to learn a useful trade or craft and start earning some money. When I joined the RAF, the Service was renowned for the quality of its Apprentices who went through RAF Halton. They could join at 15, were given an outstanding all-round education and skills training and many went on to work their way through the ranks, gain a commission and even reach high rank. Started in 1920 by the founder of the RAF, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Trenchard, they became known as Trenchard’s Brats, and in the intervening years until they were disbanded in 1993, 40,000 boys were trained, 10,000 were commissioned and 90 attained Air Rank. The designer of the jet engine Sir Frank Whittle was one of many distinguished former Apprentices. Thankfully, the RAF has once again started recruiting apprentices and it seems that the rest of the country might be realising the scheme’s potential too. How the pendulum swings. Yet another of Tony Blair’s triumphs! At least he has now had the good grace to acknowledge the error of his ways.

Talking of education and the corridors of power, it’s depressing to see that BoJo has overruled his Education Secretary Gavin Williamson over when schools should re-open. Garrulous Gavin wanted February half term but the Boss says not before 8th March at the earliest. It is an absolutely disastrous decision. If GG had any balls at all he would resign as a matter of principle. The future of the young is being sacrificed on the altar of those who’ve lived their lives and in many cases already have one foot in the grave. Harsh maybe, but true. On the BBC’s Question Time last night a majority of the “virtual” audience put their hands up when asked if they would sacrifice their Covid injection to allow a teacher to have it instead. I know I would.

I write whilst watching the HSBC Abu Dhabi Championship where Rory McIlroy and a raft of Englishmen are performing impressively well. This is the first of four Rolex Series events. From the amount of hype and promotion given to the Rolex Series you would be inclined to think it is something important and meaningful, not least because Keith Pelley, the Chief Executive of The European Tour proudly proclaims at every opportunity what a “game-changer” the Series is. When announcing the new schedule for 2021 he was quick to emphasise this point. It’s no coincidence of course that he was responsible for instigating it. When it was launched, the target was to have eight tournaments designated as part of “The Series”. This was achieved. None of these was a new tournament, indeed most of them were very well established and well attended ones. Others, like the Italian Open and the Turkish Airlines Open enjoyed the massive increase in prize money that went with the appellation, but they failed to attract enough of the big name players, as required by the contract with Rolex and they have reverted to ‘standard’ tournaments.

This all started when Rolex, long time supporters of the Tour with a large cash pile, were persuaded that by bumping up prize funds dramatically to $7m (now $8m) at a number of special championships, they would get fantastic publicity and attract the best players from around the world. Unfortunately, what was devised meant nothing. There is no league table or reward for excellence other than winning big money at a specific event. In other words the rich are getting considerably richer, with the only saving grace being that there is more money to go around for the lesser players as well. In the main, global players have not been attracted just because a particular tournament is now Rolex Series, indeed the Tour has been forced to pay money back to Rolex on a number of occasions because the field didn’t attract the contracted number of top players.

This season, the “game-changer” is down to just four tournaments starting in Abu Dhabi. This is a tournament which has always been one of the best, long before “The Rolex” came along. It’s always attracted a world class field because it’s played on a really good course, in beautiful weather, in February, when there’s a dearth of good golf anyway and the oil rich Sheikhs are happy to shell out large sums in appearance money. None of that has changed. Indeed since HSBC have been the title sponsor it’s got even better and they, like BMW and other big sponsors have been irked by the amount of attention and publicity that has been given to Rolex, often at their expense.

The other three Rolex Series championships are: The Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open, a tournament that for many years has been played the week before The Open Championship and for years under Barclays title sponsorship was played on a gem of a course at Loch Lomond, attracting a truly top class international field; The BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, which is the Tour’s flagship event and needs no hype, with BMW laying on a spectacular championship; and The DP World Tour Championship in Dubai at the end of the season. This is a field limited to the top sixty on the season long Race to Dubai (the old Order of Merit) and has nothing to do with The Rolex Series other than you have a better chance of being in the top sixty if you’ve played really well in one of those three previous tournaments. Indeed you could argue that it gives an unfair weighting. It already had a very large prize fund.

All of this goes to prove what can be achieved with PR, propaganda, bombast and frankly obfuscating reality with a smokescreen of very dubious claims. The Tour now owns and runs the TV broadcasts and can dictate what goes out. It means that even on Sky TV we are being fed a constant stream of bullshit about the significance of these tournaments. Gone are the good old days of objective broadcasting, where the BBC and others wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be conned by such propaganda. It is a con. I have never understood why it couldn’t have been made a more meaningful series, so that there was an incentive to play in more than one, with potentially a very large pot of gold at the end for the most successful? There may be a good reason, but I never got a good answer to the question. The fact of the matter is anyway that almost all the top players organise their schedules around the four Major Championships and the four World Golf Championships which are one step down from the Majors. (Plus the Olympics this year).

What is worth shouting about is the fact that the Tour has a really good schedule this year with some new tournaments and some re-invigorated old ones, in a much more logical and efficient order, which will serve the membership well. I earned part of my living for a long time as a commentator on the European Tour. I most certainly mean it no ill, in fact exactly the opposite. In difficult times I wish it all the very best. But please, let’s be honest with the viewers and spectators, because if you aren’t, people will quickly learn to trust nothing you say. You only have to look at China and Russia to understand that.

When will modern medicine focus on disease prevention and not the curing or control of disease? I seem to be focussing on health quite a lot at the moment, I don’t know why? As a result of too much belly fat and various unhealthy practises my heart is not in as good a shape as one would like, which has caused me to do a lot of reading and consulting of various medical experts. Mainly, I am researching how I can rely as much as possible on natural remedies and practises and as little as possible on pharmaceutical drugs. The world of functional and regenerative medicine isn’t new to me, but I am learning a lot more about it. The fact that leaps out of the pages and smacks you between the eyes is the potential for massive savings in the NHS budget if a lot more time, money, energy, research and commitment were given to all the many exciting possibilities that exist to allow us to live long and healthy lives. In other words improving our healthspan and not just our lifespan.

There are some hugely significant obstacles in the way. The first challenge would be a wholesale change of emphasis, from teaching doctors how to treat disease, to training them in the not very mystic arts of maintaining a healthy body and strong immune system, thereby dramatically reducing the numbers of people requiring hospitalisation and appreciably enhancing everyone’s quality of life into a long and happy old age. This is not complex, but the shift in attitudes required across the spectrum would be massive. The first and most important thing is diet. If everyone cut out sugars, refined products, preservatives, a lot of nutrient zero carbohydrates and saturated fats and cut down drastically on dairy products, many modern diseases like diabetes, cancer, heart disease and strokes would all but disappear. But that of course would have a monumental impact on the powerful agricultural and food industries and the exchequer. Imagine what supermarket shelves would look like with no breakfast cereals, no mass produced breads, cakes and biscuits, no sweets and confectionary, no sugar and flour. Wipe out whole aisles of alcohol, processed foods and a lot of cheese and dairy. In fact suddenly supermarkets might look like old fashioned specialist shops on the high street….now there’s a thought! The rise of the supermarket might have been one of the single biggest factors in our dreadful modern diet. How lovely is it still to visit a small market town in France and shop at the street market and the boulangeries and patisseries.

To diet, you would have to add stress management and lifestyles, quality exercise, weight control and a list of other things that are entirely achievable and don’t involve pharmaceutical drugs. But that is the second challenge! How to control and minimise the influence of the hugely powerful Pharmaceutical industry. Already, so many treatments and protocols exist that the bulk of doctors and others are blithely unaware of (or turn a blind eye to) because Big Pharma keeps them in ignorance. The Drugs industry pays so many bills, but their wares predominantly only manage conditions, often with quite unpleasant side-effects. Unfortunately, to benefit from all that functional and regenerative medicine has to offer, one currently has to go down the expensive private route and clearly that is outside the majority of people’s financial compass, even if they are aware of it, which millions aren’t.

If Star Trek is to be believed, there will come a day when obesity is a long forgotten word, when nutrition involves popping a few highly nutritious pills each day and almost anything can be resolved by scanning the body with a handheld “thing”. I fancy that day is still a long way off though, sadly. Prior to Covid, the NHS Budget was roughly £130bn annually. Imagine how that could be used to offset the loss of tax income from the Food and Pharmaceutical industries if the population was fit and healthy?

Is it not extraordinary that medicine and nutrition are seen as separate professions? In computing, rubbish in, rubbish out. Likewise with the human body. Prevention has always been better than cure, but it’s only now that a growing band of functional medicine aficionados are starting to make waves and scientific research is focusing on prevention and very early detection of disease that there might be a small shaft of light at the end of a very long tunnel.

So ends the Sermon on the Mount.

I’ve just been listening to a very clever doctor talking about the coronavirus pandemic and how “obese people die more frequently”. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand what she meant, but it did make me wonder how often you can die? Does getting fat mean you become like a cat with nine lives? Is obesity like a Lazarus drug? Is this why so many Americans have become so huge over the last few decades; in the (hopefully) mistaken view that layers of lard will permit instant reincarnation into the same body?

Of course her point is that the fatter you are, the greater the risk that Covid will wrap it’s icy tentacles around your vital organs and squeeze the lifeblood out of you; a sort of natural selection in fact, a survival of the fittest. What better incentive to eat well, de-stress, exercise properly, detox and laugh heartily and often? I am attempting all of the above.

Talking of our transatlantic brethren, I am baffled by how they speak. They tend to be very literal in their speech, so words like Leicester (Lester in English) and Wymondham (Windham) get a different treatment when uttered by the Kentucky crowd. The ‘O’ is a typical example. Normally they will pronounce an ‘O’ the way we say the letter. Hence a golfer like Jason Kokrak is pronounced with a long ‘O’, like oval, whereas we would probably say Cockrak as in a hen’s partner. The fact that they typically pronounce each letter (as in Sherlock H O L M E S….drives me mad!) makes you wonder why the year we’ve just left seems to be known across The States as Twenny Twenny? Still the recognition of a ‘T’ in a word is becoming universally infra dig as Estuary English assumes ever greater authority; thanks Tony Blair.

There was a play on BBC Radio 4 today about a lesbian couple with a baby. The one who hadn’t given birth to their child was complaining that even though they had made love she didn’t feel an emotional connection to the child because she had had no part in its manufacture. Curiously, it’s not something I’d ever really thought about before. Clearly God hadn’t either. I went out with an American many moons ago who later realised she was a lesbian. (I can have that effect on women). She hooked up with a divorcee with two children from her heterosexual union. They wanted a child of their own, so my ex-friend was artificially inseminated with the sperm of her wife’s brother. I’m not sure even that would have provided the full solution to the conundrum?….murky waters!

Talking of which, I thought I might have found a private answer to my heart problem, bearing in mind the lack of NHS facilities while Covid exercises their every sinew. On a What’s App group a friend recommended Advanced Blockage Clearance Ltd, but it turns out another friend needed someone to de-gunge his drains. Clever doctor still required……

“Celebrations ‘risk shutdown'” proclaimed a sports headline in The Times a couple of days ago. Elite sport has been given a green card to keep going through Lockdown, while the rest of us are vilified if we risk visual contact with another human, overdo our daily quota of exercise or venture more than a mile or three from our castles. With an inexplicable logic, or lack of it, the Government allows grotesquely overpaid and artless footballers to slide into six man embraces to celebrate the goal that might enable the manager to keep his job, while the rest of us aren’t permitted to walk round a golf course on our own for fear of catching a coronavirus mutation from the aggressive local fox population. But now, as Covid spreads more rapidly amongst the professional ranks, their licence is in danger of being endorsed, with immediate disqualification the penalty. Pep Guardiola, who could probably survive for a few months without any income, explains that his Manchester City charges feel compelled to “hug their teammates for two or three seconds” to celebrate the joy of scoring. This represents the wonderful liberal progress we have made over the last few decades. No longer the embarrassed jog back to the centre circle, feeling rather pleased with oneself, having left the oppo’s ‘keeper sprawling in the dirt, but not sure where to look, with any public displays of exuberance strictly infra dig; the upper lip remained stiff and the spirit that had made Britain Great was noticeably intact. What chance I wonder that the current necessity to avoid intimate contact might actually persuade our super-rich heroes to proceed with a little more decorum in future? Not great I suspect, sadly.

On a slightly connected note, there have been a couple of instances this week that exemplify how times have changed. In America, Justin Thomas, one of the very best golfers, disappeared up his own backside in a volley of heartrending apology for calling himself a ‘faggot’ when he missed an easy shot. This raises two questions. Is he an awful person for such self-flagellation and is it right that television’s microphones are so intrusive that sportsmen can’t berate themselves on the field of battle without the serried ranks of professional offendees chiming in with faux outrage and embarrassment? To the latter, I fear that is now the way of the world and it does often produce some interesting insights. Richly rewarded professionals just have to be aware of it and respond accordingly. The former is indicative of how we have become so precious and frankly ‘wet’. Meanwhile, in Australia, Tim Paine, captain of their cricket team, was obliged to fall on his sword and spew a torrent of abject apology for having the temerity to call one of his Indian opponents a ‘dickhead’. Can you imagine Sir Ian Botham and Ian Chappell restricting themselves to such innocent abuse as they faced off out in the middle before sharing a beer in the dressing room afterwards? I do realise I am a totally knackered old fart, out of touch with the modern world, but honestly, it’s pathetic.

One unforeseen aspect of Brexit, that would surely have swayed more people to vote in favour of it, is the revelation that we now no longer fall under the umbrella that allows European Beaks to chase us up for motoring offences on the Continent. The chances are that we can now happily be a bit too heavy with the right foot and avoid the long arm of the law touching our collars, unless you’re caught red handed I presume. That would have saved me a fortune over the last couple of decades! Time for a celebration I fancy.

Is it really only a week since last I wrote? National Lockdown was just starting again, schools were being closed, vaccines were being rolled out and confusion reigned. The following day I suffered a heart attack and enjoyed a lengthy stay in Eastbourne District General Hospital’s A&E Department before taking a circuitous route to the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU). After a sleepless night, I had an angioplasty the following morning and was back home by 9pm, the proud owner of three shiny new stents. Whoever invented the stent and the method of their insertion into heart arteries should have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. They are a brilliant invention and generally, with a bit of luck, allow the stentee to return to a normal, full and active life; or at least as full and active one as he or she had before.

If, like me, you have no concept of the procedure, allow me a brief explanation. Lying on a flat table under a complex X-ray machine, a very thin tube is inserted into the artery in your right wrist (or thigh, wrist in my case) with the help of a local anaesthetic. The surgeon manoeuvres the tube up your arm and into your heart where, courtesy of a constant stream of low level X-rays, he can examine the entire ticker. That’s called an angiogram. If the crucial passageways are found to be partly or even nearly wholly blocked, they can then put a stent on a tiny inflatable bulb at the end of the tube, manoeuvre it into position and inflate the bulb. The stent is a bit like a very small biro spring, except it’s a mesh construction rather than a coil. This expands on the inflated bulb to push out the sides of the gummed up (technical term!) blood vessel. When the bulb is deflated the stent remains in place and will, after a year or so, have been absorbed by the artery/vein to form a new, smooth wall. That part is the angioplasty. The whole procedure is almost painless, fascinating to watch and took less than ninety minutes. The worst part was the growing need for a pee! I can’t speak highly enough of the hospital staff who were impressively professional despite coping with the almost overwhelming pressures and stress of the Covid inundations. Apparently there are still enough stupid people out there who either believe that the virus doesn’t exist or that it’s perfectly ok for them to ignore the rules to their hearts content. I saw with my own eyes just what a critical period this is.

This experience has not changed my view on how we should have handled the pandemic. I still believe that medium to long term the cure is going to be dramatically worse than the illness. We should have done a much better job of protecting the elderly and vulnerable but allowed life to continue normally as far as possible, particularly by keeping schools running. In the short term now, the situation is very dangerous and surely we must comply with BoJo’s Regs. (As an Army officer Queen’s Regulations was our bible; not that I’m calling Boris a queen)

My week descended further into misery when on Saturday evening I was forced to dial the dreaded triple 9 and hail an ambulance ride back to A&E. Normally Saturday night in the aforementioned department can be hell on earth but with Lockdown in force there were no drunken and wounded warriors. Nonetheless, having left home at 10pm, it was 6 am before I was able to snuggle up in a CCU bed once again; over seven hours in A&E. A sleepless night so soon after the stent op wasn’t ideal. By early afternoon on Sunday, the necessary blood tests had been completed and I was assured all was in order. The continuing chest pains are musculoskeletal and not heart related……apparently. I made it home comfortably in time for a Sunday roast supper, courtesy of a worried Mrs T. She cooked the best roast parsnips I’ve had for many a moon.

The men and women at the sharp end in the NHS are dedicated professionals who for the most part constantly strive for the best, I have no doubt. But they are terribly hampered by a petty bureaucracy that is scary to witness. The amount of form-filling, paperwork and back-covering that goes on now adds dramatically to the levels of stress and burnout. Take a look at what’s demanded for a retired doctor or nurse to join the vaccine workforce as an example. Following many complaints, the number of forms required has been REDUCED to about fifteen. It’s madness and yet another example of our politically correct, arse-covering society that threatens to stifle and maim life as we have known it.

I apologise for a somewhat serious epistle on this occasion, but you may deduce why it is so….as Captain Kirk might have said.

2020 is no more, the year that was going to be so much better is being greeted with the news that BoJo is about to make another proclamation that will go some way to totally wrecking this country. Our children returned to school today amid stringent precautions, with every child being required to self test before coming back to school and with regular checks every few days. According to the BBC’s political Editor Laura Blackhill, Bojo will announce this evening that all schools are to close with effect from midnight tonight. This is not meant to be a political blog, but what’s happening is so all-engulfing it’s hard not to make comment. The words piss-up, brewery and organise spring to mind. If I hear one more political “leader” quoting “the science” I might just walk into the English Channel and keep walking!

Callie, our whippet lurcher, is as good-natured a hound as you could hope to meet. She loves to run and she loves to play. A flat-out chase with another four-legged beast is doggie heaven. It’s intriguing to watch the mental processes involved. Quite often when she sees another dog approaching she will completely ignore it, walking by on the other side, apparently oblivious of the Good Samaritan. Sometimes she will approach with caution, cuddle muzzles like teenage lovers and perhaps even venture round the back for a good anal sniff. More often than not such tentative overtures lead to nothing and the would-be lovers trot off in opposite directions. Occasionally, such amorous behaviour sparks a chase, with Callie darting off at high speed for a few seconds before turning to make sure that her new playmate is playing ball. If not she’ll try to provoke the other mutt by chasing it or using her front paws like a kangaroo, to punch the indolent creature into action. Such encounters don’t normally last long. The really fun one to watch is when Callie spots a likely soulmate approaching from some way off. Goodness knows what signals she gets that indicate a willing fellow-chaser but she’s normally not disappointed. She’ll go into a low crouch like a panther waiting to pounce. Once the approaching target is within ten yards or so, she leaps into high speed action, throwing herself at the opposition either to induce a chase with her as the rabbit or to chase her new found friend. She not only has electrifying acceleration and an impressive top speed for a small dog, but she is incredibly agile with a very tight turning circle. It’s pretty much only fellow whippets that can match her for speed, but once caught she has a ready will to scrap, using her front legs and paws like George Foreman to punch the opponent into submission. Every now and then some wolverine lookalike will prove too daunting and then she’ll come and shelter behind her mistress until the coast is clear. Walking on the Sussex Downs is never dull with Callie.

It’s looking horribly as though another national lockdown is imminent, which means there will be nothing happening and nothing to write about. That will stretch my ingenuity to the limit! Back in March and April we were blessed with gorgeous Mediterranean weather that lasted for weeks and weeks; gardening, or even just lounging in the sun was an absolute pleasure. Now, the days are short, the air chill, the sky grey and the air thick with moisture. Fun.

We’ve just been for a lovely long walk in soggy Friston Forest with an excited Callie. Whilst donning wellies and other cold and wet prevention equipment, the car next to us in the car park lay dormant, save for an idling diesel engine. The driver’s door was open, with no sign of a driver. Standing behind an open tailgate a young mother was holding her small child, smiling in a friendly fashion, no doubt waiting for hubby/the driver to return. Both she and the child were cunningly located so that the incredibly nasty diesel exhaust fumes would have been going straight into their lungs and depositing dangerous particles deep down inside that will probably be there forever; bad enough for a young mum, but criminal for a helpless child that knows no better. You could almost hear the surrounding beech trees moaning at such stupidity and thoughtlessness, as the pure woodland air was polluted by one man’s criminal lack of awareness. It happens not infrequently that parents waiting to pick up their daughters from School sit outside the House with their engines running, sometimes for many minutes. It does make you wonder…..

There’s a new TV series out on Netflix, called Brigerton. You may have read about it. It’s a fairly mindless piece of costume drama about Regency London, debutantes “coming out” and the frivolous machinations of the aristocracy. To me, the whole thing is rendered unwatchable with the Queen of England being played by a black woman, as well as the Duke of Hastings and his family all being black. This is political correctness, racial equality, gender neutrality etc etc all gone completely mad. For those that know no better, we’ve never had a black queen nor have members of the aristocracy been jet black. How would the world react if a story about African tribes saw one of the tribal chieftains played by a white man? There would be justifiable outrage. Where will this lunacy end? It sits alongside the claims for slave trade reparations. It’s right that the wrongs of two or three centuries ago should be acknowledged, but at the same time let’s remember that those were very brutal times. Serving in the Army or Royal Navy was fiendishly tough. Life for the poor and downtrodden was hideous. More recently, during the industrial Revolution our own kith and kin were treated abominably, working in the mills in the North of England for uncaring and often cruel taskmasters. It simply doesn’t work trying to make a judgemental comparison of life in different centuries. Incidentally, for the record, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement had previously been found guilty of trading young girls, a modern day slave trade.

One of my recent pleasures has been playing tennis with a new group of friends who all play to a good standard, albeit, like me, their promising future is behind them. Most of us much prefer playing doubles but under the new Tier 4 regulations we are now restricted to singles. Could somebody a lot more intelligent than me please explain why singles is permissible but doubles isn’t? My doubles partner and I rarely get within four metres of each other, let alone two. We don’t bear hug, or kiss (certainly not on the lips) or even high five. Unless the new “highly contagious mutant” can be passed by touching rackets at arms length, we are in significantly less danger than going shopping, to work, on the tube or talking on Zoom. (Bad for the mental health!) We’re out playing in the fresh air, which serves to maintain a healthy mind and body and we are all incredibly conscious of the sensible coronavirus protocols, as none of us is keen on catching Covid. I fancy the majority of citizens want to play by the rules, but when the law is an ass don’t be surprised when people kick back.