The Ryder Cup

Though, in truth, the last three have been pretty dull. And this one could well be drowned in soft Welsh rain.

However, the ones in the late 80s and through the 90s were terrific sport. Indeed, and I swear this to be true, we actually only subscribed to Sky Sports originally because Anne wanted to watch the Ryder Cup.

All the pundits are saying Europe will win, and 75% of all bets being taken are for Europe. Accordingly, I can share with you that the USA are a terrific price at 15/8. Simple patriotic bias and hype are making the away side great value. Mind you, I thought exactly the same about Valencia last night. Or, to put it another way, you can't eat value.

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Woody Allen

With only a couple of weeks to fill, I should be able to get there simply by a self-indulgent list of any favourites I haven't hitherto mentioned.

Still my favourite film-maker, for all he hasn't made a good film this decade, and is regarded as a pervert by anyone under the age of 40.

6 of my top 30 films: (7 if you count When Harry Met Sally)
Broadway Danny Rose
Purple Rose of Cairo
Sleeper
Love and Death
Annie Hall
Manhattan Murder Mystery

not mentioning the extraordinary one-offs:
Zelig
Radio Days
Everyone Says I love You

Or the just damned good films:
Bananas
Play it again, Sam
Manhattan
Hannah and Her Sisters
Crimes and Misdemeanours
Bullets over Broadway
Small Time Crooks

The rhythms of racing

This is a big thing at the moment. Flat racing is suffering badly as a sport, not least because people aren't betting on it. The powers that be have decided that the reason for this is that it lacks a "narrative" in the way, say, a football season does.

But flat racing's problems have little to do with narrative. I'd say the problems lie more with:
a) far too many races, at least 5 meetings a day in summer, full of mediocre horses running in tight little handicaps, so that no-one can sensibly keep on top of all the form, and so stops bothering.
b) the old problem that the horses are sent off to stud too early, so that punters can't grow attached to them, unlike jumps racing.
c) persistent over-watering by clerks of courses, presumably done on purpose and to order, to make form entirely untrustworthy.
d) the on-going fall-out of having some of the most senior jockeys bent as two-bob notes.

In fact the "narrative" of flat racing is very strong once you get to know it. I certainly measure out my days by it, in the same way I measure out the winter months (which I've written about before).

The Lincoln to kick us off in March; Guineas trials; the mixed meeting at Sandown to hand jumps racing over to flat racing; the Guineas; the Derby/Oaks trials meetings - Epsom, Lingfield, Sandown, Newbury, Goodwood; the Derby/Oaks/Coronation Cup; then into June for Royal Ascot; then 3 year olds start meeting the older horses with the Eclipse at Sandown, and the King George at Ascot; onto Glorious Goodwood at the end of July; and York's Ebor meeting in August; a holiday lull before the last Classic, the St Leger; Ayr; and then October's curtain-closers The Cambridgeshire, Champion Stakes, and Cesarewitch.

And that's just top races in this country. Intertwine with the Irish and French classics, and the Breeders Cup and there's a "story" every week. This week sees the autumn equinox of the season with the Cambridgeshire and the Arc, segueing slowly over the coming weeks from the end of the flat to the beginning of the jumps. For most of our adult lives it's signalled the time Anne and I have gone on our annual holidays (also April - after the Grand National, before the Guineas).

Given that these racing seasons also match the real seasons, you have an even greater sense of the year's rhythms, (which, in doing these "in praise ofs", I've realised are very important to me).

It also means we've always been on holiday "out of season". We either arrive at places before they've opened for the summer - "oh, this place is dead before Memorial day", or after they've closed - "oh no, not since Labor day." But that too, has its charms...


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10 year old tawny port

Now, I can hardly claim to be a connoisseur (nor can I claim to be able to spell connoisseur). My dad once ordered the full range of ports in a restaurant off the Strand and Anne and I had to guess which was which, and which we liked best. We both got everything wrong.

It was like that fantastic skit Mel Brooks does on chat-shows where he does a blind wine-tasting, which starts with him saying "It's a Chateau Lafittes, premier cru 1953, no pardon, 1957, am I right? and culminates with him asking "Is it a red wine?"

Some years later we spent a lovely afternoon in Graham's port lodge in Porto, which taught us everything a bluffer could possibly want to know about port, but I was so pissed when I left all I remember was a liking for the 10 year old tawny stuff and that's been my adopted port of choice ever since.

Of course, you have to drink it once you've uncorked it, so today's traipse up the Long Mynd is going to seem a touch more challenging than normal...

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Pulled off at half-time

A small Saturday column in the Racing Post, a silly look at the week's sport, named after the alleged conversation between Rodney Marsh and Sir Alf Ramsey.

Alf: "Rodney, I'll be watching you for the first 45 minutes and if you don't work harder I'll pull you off at half-time"
Rodney: "Blimey Alf, all we usually get at City is tea and a slice of orange."

Anyway, it's hidden behind a pay-wall, so I'll share this week's with you as it made me smile over my toast this morning, and it's an attack on grumbling:

"I suppose it was inevitable the Commonwealth Games, one of the last vestiges of the British Empire should have turned into a festival of moaning. Moaning is among the most popular pursuits in Britain, along with whinging, complaining, grumbling and fly-fishing.

Several athletes have already pulled out of the Delhi games because of concerns about security and the state of the athletes' village. And, even more damagingly, the Russians, Americans and Chinese look set to boycott the Commonwealth Games yet again.

As an old India hand myself I can't help thinking that all these complaints about accommodation seem a bit precious. I've stayed in some pretty ropey digs on the subcontinent but life's what you make of it, you know?

If our high-maintenance hurdlers and prima donna pole-vaulters don't want to go to Delhi, let's send a team who will enjoy the experience - namely public-school educated gap-year kids.

They won't mind roughing it in the relay team with a couple of local beggars and some French hippie from the hostel who left his mind in Marrakesh in 1973.

'It's amazing here but the poverty is just unbelievable. You see those Nikes that Mungo Jossington-Smythe's wearing? They're not even limited edition. I know - I literally died of shock when I found out.' "

(James Milton)

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Snoozing in the conservatory

Or snoozing anywhere come to that. But the conservatory outside of summer, with its own micro climate, is the place to settle after a walk in the rain, curled up with the dog and cat, polishing off the crossword, gazing at the clouds sliding across the sky and gradually slipping into a half-asleep nod. Wake yourself up with a snort. And repeat.

Never has the allegory of the frog being slowly boiled in the saucepan seemed so apt. Even Anne, who I can attest has never napped in her life, has been known to close her eyes for a moment...


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Digging-up Potatoes

I lifted my main crop of pink fir apple potatoes yesterday - the last day of summer - and a mighty fine crop of knobbled, freak-show tatties did I muster.

All vegetable harvesting has that "mixing memory and desire", cycle of life thang going on, and of all vegetable gardening jobs, getting your fork under a bulging tuber of potatoes, and getting your hands into the enriched loamy earth to mine the little lost nuggets is by far the most life-affirming...


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Burping, scratching and farting

As I limp towards the finishing line of this challenge, I find myself having to cast around for the smaller, overlooked, glories of life.

In this instance, those glorious animal pleasures most sensible men keep to themselves when women they haven't already nailed are around.

"But you and I we've been through that and this is not our fate" as Dylan would have it, and the older wiser me doesn't even notice he's burping, is prone to involuntary farting, and often finds himself in polite company distractedly scratching his balls.

When I sit in the conservatory I'm akin to a gorilla in the zoo...

I'm sure I hear Bobby tutting sometimes. He's so middle England.


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My favourite buildings

There was a couple of people climbing the Clifton Suspension Bridge on TV last night and I got all nostalgic about one of my favourite places.

The views were terrific, and I remembered the very early sunny morning when I was new to Bristol, and Mick and I cycled to the then nascent balloon festival, and got to the bridge in time to see a couple of balloons dare each other to fly under it (a manoeuvre banned ever after).

Then, at the end of the TV show they said they were off to St Pancras, which is my favourite building in London. Anne and I once went round the old hotel on one of those Open Day things and I desperately hope they do as good a job on restoring that as they have done on putting the railway station together.

Which got me thinking about my other favourite buildings, and once I'd got half of New York out of my head I came up with:

The Circle - long before the south bank of the Thames became a playground for rich bankers, and strolling tourists, it was a complete shit-hole. Anne used to walk down Tooley Street to work, and all it consisted of was cafes and tramps. The Circle was one of the first footprints towards the pleasant Saturday afternoon experience visitors can enjoy these days, and still seems to me the best fancy development of them all.

The Severn Bridge. The old one. I realise the new one is much more pleasing on the eye but this one is redolent of much that has been good in my life. A little known biographical fact is that I actually lived in a caravan on that island/spit on the Welsh side, whilst my dad built the thing. No wonder I felt linked to it through the Lampeter years - every journey stuck at Aust, either as part of the 10 hour National Express ride, or stood there for nearly that long with my thumb out.

Similarly, I've always loved the other end of the line - the elevated section of the M4. Lucozade bottle, touching distance from halfway up green-glassed office blocks, Brentford wastelands stretching away beneath you, and the feeling of going/coming home whichever way we approached it, first Bristol, then London.

What's your favourite memory-laden building?

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Roast boiled ham

If we do give up meat for a year there's quite a lot of meat I won't miss at all:

Offal
McDonalds/KFC etc
Pepperoni and other tasteless versions of preserved pig, often found on pizzas

and plenty I can't imagine missing:

Venison
Pheasant
Pigeon

and I would have included gammon on that second list. What's the point in a thick, rubberised piece of bacon, only made palatable by a tinned pineapple ring?

However, last night Anne boiled up a ham, put something sweet and sticky on the fat and then roasted it off. Served with unctuous parsley sauce, butternut squash in a cream and tomato sauce, cheesy-baked courgettes and red onions, and a very sticky pommes coq d'or. Sticky to
the pan that is.

And now I fear I may miss it all next year...


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Wearing shorts all summer

I notice some of you are holding off until October 1st before putting the the heating on. Similarly, since April, on my daily walks, I have been wearing shorts and T-shirt, in a combo that makes me look not dissimilar to Marlon Brando in his Apocalypse Eating Now years. But this morning it feels as though I may have reached the endgame.

Strangely, all the other walkers I pass seem to be ridiculously over-dressed, considering I'm the soft southerner. This is never more obvious than when I bump into one of the rambling groups for the elderly of Shropshire. I say "I bump into", but of course I really mean Bobby, who likes a good long run-up before barrelling through any group, back legs skittering and tail helicoptering furiously, before he backs up and comes back through for a second go, trying to land his spare. This usually leads to much middle england consternation and tutting, at least until Anne's mum recognises her son-in-law.

It's a lovely summer's day, and these people are invariably dressed accordingly. Winter walking boots, hat, waterproof leggings, spats, and enough gore-tex to get them to the south pole. To be fair they do walk too slowly to get a sweat up - when 20 of them encounter a stile, the first two over set up forward camp and settle down to wait for the rest.

Anyway, I take a more minimal approach. I'm a free spirit. I go where the sun takes me. I like the feel of the wind wafting through my parts as I swing through the nettles. And as a result, here, at the dog days' end, I have a deeply wrinkled redneck and brown forearms and shins that would win me the best farmer-tan of the year award at the Iowa State Fair.

In short, in shorts, I look a right twat...

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Experimental Novels (part 3)

Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker 1980

"Looking at the smoak coming up in the dead town and my mynd still running on the dogs. There ben the dead towns all them years. Ram out poasts in 1 part of them and dogs hoalt up in other parts. And all them years you heard storys of dog peopl. Peopl with dogs heads and dogs with peopls heads. Some said come Ful of the Moon they all run to gether in the Black Pack. Dogs and dog peopl to gether. The Ram dint allow no 1 in the dead towns but when I ben littl we use to sly in when ever we got the chance and kids a nuff for crowd. Trying if we cud see dog peopl. Fork Stoan it ben befor we livet near Bernt Arse. We never seen nothing only the hevvys and they all wways seen us off qwick. We heard things tho some times. Singing or howling or crying, or larfing you cudnt qwite say what it wer or what it wernt."

Many ful of the moons in futr. After Littl Shining Man wert pult apart by Eusa in the 1 Big 1 Riddley livt in darkness. Irn was got from olt machines. Dogs have turnt agin peopl but Riddley is dog frendy, and so not trusty. No won livt in towns no more, but he livt near Fork Stoan and talks alt threw like a Kentish retard. Soon he makes pilgrim to Cambry.

You havt to read it real slow in accent. For 220 pages.

Experimental Novels (part 2)

A book that follows a tube train from Embankment to Elephant and Castle. 252 passengers and the driver, all sat down. Each of the 253 people has a page describing them and what they are thinking in 253 words exactly.

This book was originally (1996) released on-line and is still there. The on-line version has hyperlinks throughout so that you can jump through the carriages, from person to person, following their connectedness in a god-like way.

In or around 1996 I had the thought that I'd better write the first e-mail novel, before everyone else did. Naturally, I started out with verve and gusto and no doubt the first chapter of brilliance is festering a box upstairs somewhere. Remarkably, as far as I'm aware, the world is still awaiting the great e-mail novel . This is a much more ambitious idea. I didn't like it much when I first found it on-line. However, the book is brilliant. On the internet the tricks get in the way.

On paper the repetition has rhythm and the pen portraits are terrific. After all, who doesn't sit on the tube thinking about the other people around them. In fact if I was going to criticise him it would be for the astonishing range of his portraits. I've done the relevant studies and using regression analysis on the data I can assure you that at any single time on any given tube train 100% of the men are thinking about sex 110% of the time.

Experimental Novels (part 1)

I have a trio to share with you over the next few days, unless something more interesting happens!

It's strange how art went completely whacky after Picasso et al blew painting to pieces, but the novel never really changed post Joyce. And Tristram Shandy and Gulliver's Travels still seem more avant garde than virtually anything I ever come across.

Here's an exception though.

Mark Dunn's "ella minnow pea" (you need to say that out loud quickly). Published 2001.

It's epistolary in format, but the letters start running out of letters. As the blurb has it:

"The letter 'z' has fallen from the statue of Nevin Nollop, revered author of the sentence 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' - and the island's rulers interpret this as a sign of divine displeasure and ban its use in any form. In a novel composed of correspondence, the loss of 'z' is inconvenient; but far worse is to come as more letters fall, and more are banned, until only 'l, m, n, o, p' remain...."

Which makes it a fascinating afternoon's read for its own sake. How it also manages to be a damned fine allegory about censorship and totalitarianism is something of a marvel.

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My favourite supper

Now, I bet if asked you all to name my favourite dish, you'd say, oh for fuck's sake Gary, who gives a shit. But then to humour me, you'd plump for chinese belly pork, or crispy duck, or Kastoori curries, or salt and pepper squid, or napoleon beef, or crab plucked out of the Puget Sound, or lobster hot-dog rolls in Maine, or red curry and pad thai, or anything with truffles, or cheesey peas...and indeed all of them would rank in the top 100 of my top 10 dishes.

But my softest of soft spots is saved for last night's supper:
Pork chop, sliced roast potatoes, leeks in white sauce.

We're seriously considering giving up meat for the year in 2011. I'd best make the most of it...

Malcolm Gladwell

When I lived in London, every December I would trek up to Hamleys, ostensibly to buy presents. Really, though, I was there to watch the bloke who throws the planes. If you haven't experienced this for yourself - the ground floor of Hamleys is a massive space, full of thronging shoppers and, adding to the market-place atmosphere people selling all the usual tacky toys that make up Christmas - the dogs that walk and do back-flips; whoopee cushions; soap bubble launchers and so on.

In the middle of all this, standing on box is a student - throwing a kit-made airplane into the air. The plane makes a complete lazy circle of the great hall, over the heads of the throng, before gliding gently into land in the hand of the bored student, who sends him off again. It's a thing of great beauty and magic. I become completely caught up in the moment, and naturally buy a pack for some nephew or other.

Come Christmas Day, we invariably break one of the planes in the drunken making of it, smash another one to pieces on its maiden flight into the twin towers of living-room door, and no doubt this year Bobby would do for the final plane what he did to that poor pheasant last week.

Reading Malcolm Gladwell is very similar. He writes for the New Yorker and has penned a series of books that have all been number one bestsellers in the states. His approach is to hit you with some gob-smacking statistic, (eg, you have virtually no chance of being a professional ice-hockey player in Canada if you were born in the last 6 months of the year) and then take you on a journey round the world, picking up a pocketful of analogies along the way, before delivering you back home, breathless and verbally fulfilled. Some trick.

Before you know it, you're at some dinner-party or pub, and you bring up something he's said, except you only half remember it, and miss out an important step of the trick, and suddenly what seemed genius seems either a bit silly, or a bit obvious, to both you and the people suffering your groping drivel.

The collection of his New Yorker articles is his best book by far: "What The Dog Saw".

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Owls

Or wols, if you prefer.

Since I've been up here I have occasionally seen a barn owl trying to fly into the car late at night, but otherwise they've been pretty absent.

Which is a shame as I'm rather fond of them. We went to Leeds Castle a few years back and spent a day with the bloke who looks after the birds of prey there. This included feeding two tiny fluffy balls of baby owls pieces of rat until they were full. I said "how will we know when they are full". The bloke said "they'll fall over, fast asleep". And they did.

We then took a small friendly owl, Ozzy, for a walk - he would follow behind, bell jangling, much like my cat currently, and then swoop up onto our arms for his food, hop off, and so on, all around the castle grounds.

We then flew a kookaburra, vulture, eagle and god knows what else, before going hunting in the afternoon with a harris hawk (which caught a pheasant). The whole day was remarkably cheap, considering it was just the two of us with the birdman, and I heartily recommend it..

Anyway we have a tawny owl, or possibly two, in the trees down our lane - with the proper twit twoo thing going on, which is a good way to usher in autumn and the on-coming winter night sky.


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People pissing about on the X Factor Auditions

Svengali's stage management of this show reaches preposterous levels of pre-planned drama and audience manipulation, including what appears to be a fair few actors sprinkled in amongst the auditions.

However, am I the only who has sensed a few select soul rebels seeking to take the piss out of the show. Not to be mistaken for the usual array of saddoes, mingers and nutters.

For example, I'm talking about last night's trio of girls - "Bun 'N' Cheese". They looked like the gaggle of black girls you'll find at the back of any bus in South London who can perfectly harmonise every Destiny's Child song, saying to each other:- "So, we'll go on right, and they'll think we look just like a gaggle of black girls you might find on any bus in South London who can harmonise any Destiny's Child song, and that's what we'll do to get through the screening audition, and then, like, when we're on stage we'll just stand there and not sing, innit."

It's not quite hanging bankers from every lamp-post from Canary Wharf to Bank, but I'm sure I caught a glimmer of subversion there....

Although I think Bun N Cheese may well be submitting last night's video as their A Level Drama project..


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Playing Tennis

I think the highlight of my brief sojourn was the late addition to our usual annual routine, a surprisingly competitive game of tennis in East Sheen Park.

Lack of fitness, ill-fitting training shoes, rustiness, an inability to serve, and a backhand somewhat akin to Anne throwing a cricket ball, all couldn't disguise the fact that there's a really very mediocre tennis player half-digested inside me barking out orders that my body can't follow...

My eye was also taken off the ball when I was serving from the end where you could see the yummy mummies doing combat training. They of course were being similarly distracted by my top-spin lacking lobs, and sheer athletic magnetism...


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Anne

Without meaning to be sentimental on a semi-public forum, she does get taken for granted by pretty much everyone around her, particularly me.

By my reckoning it's been three years since she last left me a little note on the kitchen table telling me I'm a fat twatting loser, when I'm fairly sure I've been a fat twatting loser all of that time, which shows remarkable fortitude on her part, I know you all agree.

Anyway, I'm off to get drunk for a couple of days...


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Scottish Football

Always been a pleasure over the years, and last night the wee country flexed its muscles with a stunning giant-killing act.

I managed to catch the last half an hour and the cheers that greeted their winner in the 7th minute of 5 minutes stoppage time truly reverberated round the world.

Afterwards their talismanic centre half - 97 year old David Weir - spoke for the nation when he said they'd "felt leggy in the 3rd set and had nothing left to give but a few sulks in the 4th set, but he always believed that when the chips were down, deep-seated chippiness would see them through".

Scotland 2 Liechtenstein 1
Attendance: 37200

Population of Liechtenstein: 35000


Sorry Iain...

The Adrian Mole Diaries

Which were supposed to end due to Sue Townsend's ill-health, but are still going strong as Adrian Mole enters his "Prostrate" years.

I think I must have read them all, though looking through the list there are a couple I don't remember. They slip through so easily, I'm not surprised they've left no trace. That does them a dis-service though.

I bet read back-to-back they'd paint a pretty accurate picture of the social-political backdrop of my entire adult life, and she's actually better at pricking New Labour than she was at attacking Thatcher.

The best running gag - that Adrian Mole fervently believes in his diaries things we already know to be untrue (eg weapons of mass destruction) - extends this time to his feeling reassured that no matter what happens in life there'll always be a Woolworths on every high street, and that the best place for his savings is an Icelandic Bank. Pandora meanwhile is busy fiddling her MP expenses...

Perfect for commuters...

Chicken Balti Pies

We bought a lot of stuff from the food festival the other day, and I have to say a lot of it was very disappointing - a distinctly mediocre feta and olive flan, and a crab pasty better called a fish-paste pasty were particular lowlights.

Which leaves me pinning my hopes on the chicken balti pie we picked up. It's fair to say I fell in love with this concoction during my Craven Cottage season-ticket years. An evening match wouldn't have been the same without a molten orange lava pie with chicken-ish bits. When Tim joined me he'd insist on seconds.

Of course, as is only right, the chicken balti pie is a West Midlands invention, so I'm hoping it will taste even better in its home environment. I fear though, that this "home-made" ponced up version may lack the right balance of lard, gristle, mechanically recovered chicken and curry paste. I fear Anne may even like it.


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Food Festivals

We went to the Welsh Food Festival at Glansevern Hall Gardens near Welshpool yesterday.

It was somewhat grandly titled considering they already have the much bigger Abergavenny Food Festival, not to mention the biggest Welsh Food Festival of them all. The one at Ludlow.

It was very pleasant though, all the usual sights and sounds - stalls, free tastings, burgers, ice-cream, and watching Anne shop. I usually spend most my time thinking about my Shropshire Curry Company 'gap in the market', and chicken pakoras would have gone down very well there yesterday, but I do have to report two curry companies have now moved into and rather overflowed my "gap". Never fear though, "pots of deliciousness" seem to have disappeared and we spent a pleasant half an hour imagining what could fill that gap and came up with a similar dessert-based concept, reassuringly monickered "Tubsters".

We also spent some time remembering festivals and markets we've enjoyed around the world. I'll hold over the markets for the future, but with thanks to Anne's holiday diaries I can share with you the best Food Festival we've ever attended.

Lyre Bird Hill Winery, Australia, the Prom County Slow Food Summer Festival, which was twenty people in a barn for supper and wine tasting, a mix of visitors from Melbourne, farmer-tanned locals and their fat wives, and us. Sparkling rose to kick-off; smoked trout and damper, served with four generous tasting-glasses of chardonnays; smoked chicken caesar salad with four more; platter of local smoked meats and couscous with four more; panna cotta with four dessert wines; and then stickies with chocolates and coffee.

And some people would rather listen to crap music in a muddy field...


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Stealing stories

You may have noticed that nothing new of interest has happened to me this week. So, I'll have to stoop to one of my oldest tricks and just nick someone else's story. However, I'll refrain from representing it as my own, fully embellished. See how I've grown.

Anyway, Anne was at WI the other night - plainly not much new of interest in her week either. She had to give a talk on her day at the annual National WI Conference. Apparently this went down very well. No-one fell asleep, or died even, and most managed through the whole speech without having to nip outside and top-up their HRT patch. Afterwards several people congratulated her on talk.

One of them said: "Oh, Anne, that was an excellent speech. I heard nearly all of it."





Dinner Parties, My Wife, and Me

For many a year my wife has been wit-wary;
Since that joke about her and Sharlene Spiteri.

At dinner parties in the nineties I used to tell tales;
Tall stories, shaggy ones, ones as big as my head.
Ones I'd robbed and given a shine;
Added knobs and made out were mine.
But she began to cut in halfway through,
And cruelly take the wind from my sails:
“Not again, dear, we've heard that one before.”
Or “That's an old one darling, and not even yours.”
Or “He's not funny, don't encourage him,
Unless it's to get a proper job, and earn some money.”

All well aimed blows to the solar plexus, just because
Of some joke about her and a girl from Texas.



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Taking the cat for a walk.

Our new cat is settling in nicely. He finally has a name that's stuck. Teasel. (See what I did there?)

He's quite a change from all the other cats we've had. And not just in his never-ending mission to eradicate Shifnal of mice and sparrows. He's a tiny cat, but his territory seems to extend the whole length of the lane to the Manor - about half a mile - and god knows how wide. In the past our cats have been very unadventurous, and we've actually had two who never ever left our garden.

Anyway, Teasel likes to follow me and Bobby when we go off on our walks. About 15 yards behind us, little bell jangling as he flits in and out of the hedgerow, with occasional sprints past me and up to Bobby. Bobby and I have had to take to sneaking out the house for our long daily walk as I just don't know how far he'd come with us.

So, he's started getting his own walk later in the day, which is very confusing for all the dog walkers and cars we encounter down the lane. Bobby, for his part, takes all this for granted. In fact it's the only part of Teasel's behaviour that seems normal to him.

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The following one line poem...

Which I wish I had written, but is actually written by David Musgrave and published in The New Yorker, entitled:


‎"On the inevitable decline into mediocrity of the popular musician who attains a comfortable middle age."


'Oh Sting, where is thy death?'



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