Hopes for 2018. Or are they just blinkers?

One of the aspects of 2018 that appeals to me personally is that it will be my second calendar year in a job I actually enjoy.

That may sound pretty unimpressive but when you’ve spent ten years moving between six jobs, five of which were lousy fits – or, to be fair, to which I turned out to be hopelessly unfitted – finding one that I actually like is a remarkable uptick.

So it’s good to be starting a new year in it.

One of the aspects I enjoy of the job is that it involves quite a lot of work in Italy. Why should that appeal to me? It’s where I was born, but in the course of a long career, I’ve never had the opportunity to work there. Now, however, I’ve been working with Italian colleagues and developing relations with Italian clients, and it’s wonderfully rewarding.

As a child, I spoke Italian pretty well. Perhaps to near-native level. Today – well, it’s half a century on and things get rusty. So one of the things I’ve been doing is working on the language. Reading is one of the best ways of doing that.

Do you know Primo Levi’s book The Periodic Table? I liked it so much that I’m re-reading it. The beauty is that it’s extremely funny, which only intensifies the harrowing poignancy of the life story of a man who was one of the few survivors of the extermination camp at Auschwitz.

Primo Levi: an extraordinary history for an outstanding writer

The book’s title is derived from the profession Levi first chose, long before he became a writer. He was a chemist. Each chapter is associated with the name of an element from the Periodic Table. Near the end of one of the early chapters, Zinc, Levi explains that:

…I had always considered my origins a negligible if curious fact, a little amusing anomaly, like someone whose nose is bent or who has freckles; a Jew is someone who doesn’t decorate a tree at Christmas, who shouldn’t eat salami but does anyway, who learned a little Hebrew when he was thirteen and then forgot it.

That struck a cord, because it is so close to the way I feel about being a Jew myself. If I were more religious it would matter much more but, since I’m not, it remains for me simply a cultural idea – or, more importantly, a cultural emotion – which is far from defining who I am. It’s as essential to my character as is my imposing height (167 cm or 5’7”) or my spectacular hair colour (six decades to get it to this particular white, though it was well under way in just three).

That’s surely how these characteristics should be. Of some interest, maybe, but not the basis for any kind of real judgement. Sadly, for Levi, in the late 1930s, his origins wouldn’t long remain a mere curiosity. As racial laws were promulgated by the Fascist government, walls began to go up around him, with the doors in them closing one by one.

These days, of course, while anti-Semitism is hardly dead, it isn’t the force it once was. Nor is it by any means the main cause for the persecution of people on the basis of what they are, rather than what they have done. Today the groups suffering the most are Muslims or Blacks.

Something that brought this home to me particularly strongly was when I asked a black woman I’d just met, where she was from. It was an innocent question. Her accent said loud and clear that the answer was ‘Luton’, the town to which my wife and I had just moved. That was the answer I was expecting. But that’s not an innocent question to a black person.

She replied, “I’m from Cheltenham”.

Now Cheltenham and Luton are about as far apart as any two towns can be in England. Not geographically, though they’re hardly neighbours. The real distinction is social. Cheltenham is nice, a word you should pronounce ‘naice’. It’s wealthy. It has a fine girls’ school. It has a major British spying centre. It has a Tory MP. House prices are, I doubt not, astronomical.

Luton has two Labour MPs. It’s just a tad dust-blown. Its great advantage is that, for being this close to London, its house prices are amazingly cheap – perhaps a third to a half of the capital’s.

It’s hard to imagine anyone with her accent coming from Cheltenham.

Still, that was her answer, and we chatted a little about the town and her upbringing there before moving on to other subjects.

By the afternoon, she’d got to know me a little better. And suddenly, unprompted, she turned to me and said, “actually, I was born in Jamaica. I came to Cheltenham when I was five”.

All the weight of blackness was suddenly laid bare for me. Ask a white Englishman where he’s from and he tells you. Ask someone black, and there’s a moment at least when he has to be wondering, “are you checking on whether I’m an alien? Whether I don’t belong here?”

The attitudes that would ultimately inflict terrible suffering on Levi are still there. They just have different targets, for the most part, today.

Back to Levi’s book.

The following chapter, Iron, starts with the words:

Outside the walls of the Chemistry Institute it was night, the night of Europe: Chamberlain had returned outplayed from Munich, Hitler had entered Prague without firing a shot, Franco had subjugated Barcelona and was sitting in Madrid. Fascist Italy, a minor pirate, had occupied Albania, and the premonition of catastrophe was condensing like a viscous dew across the houses and in the streets, in careful talk and muted consciences.

Well, we’re not there yet. Reading those words on the brink of 2018 reminded me how much less bad things look today than they did in 1939. But then, they didn’t look so bad in 1930, but the 1939 catastrophe came anyway.

And yet, if we wanted to live, Levi tells us later, if we wanted in some way to take advantage of the youth that was flowing through our veins, there was no other resource… than voluntary blindness.

Yes. That’s what stops us preventing that kind of slide. And yet, if Levi chose voluntary blindness, with what he was facing, what’s to stop us doing the same?

I’m looking forward to another year in a job I like. It should be fun. But is that just me choosing blindness too?

Best wishes for 2018

Happy New Year to you all!

Sadly, I’m finishing the Old Year in nothing like the way I’d hoped. I’m flattened by a dose of indigestion whose details I’ll spare you. Let me just say that it leaves me with only one desire, to sleep, in between runs to a rather smaller room.

What makes the experience less harsh is the company I’m enjoying. The little splash of orange is Toffee, our tiny dog, and it’s always good to have her around; the large grey and white lump is Misty, our enormous cat, who can be affectionate too, though he does have a way of biting me – hard – if he feels I’m not stroking him quite right.

Making my sickbed more cheerful:
Misty and Toffee

Between them, they’re making my goodbye to 2017 far better than it might have been. As was the fact that the sun went down appreciably later than it has been: there is a distinctive smell of improvement in the air.

That’s what I like this time of year. We ring in the New Year at just the time when we can feel that things are beginning to move back uphill again. At least, in this hemisphere – to my friends in the south, at least you know it’ll come back for you too in time.

Anyway, for now, let me just wish you a great 2018. With Toffee and Misty adding their wishes to mine.

Mountain trials and SMART objectives

The trouble with walking in mountains is that the tops take an excruciating time to get closer.

You look up and see a ridge line. The top, surely, you think to yourself. But when you get there you find it was another false hope. That behind one hill there generally stands another and higher one. Getting to the top always takes far longer than you’d hoped, and far more energy than you planned to burn.

My preferred solution is to adapt to this tricksy behaviour and only ever set myself close and easy targets. “I’ll just go to the top of this hill and then see whether to turn back or not.” Then I can take a decision once I’m there: go on to the next hill or call it off. The truth is that I always do go on, but it feels much more comfortable to persuade myself that I have the option.

This approach fits neatly with a methodology derived from the business world: the setting of objectives that have be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. It isn’t clear to me how “achievable” and “realistic” differ from each other but, hey, who wants to quibble when the price might be losing a fine acronym?

I lived out an instructive case study in the application of these principles just the other day, during our Christmas holiday – strictly a non-Christmas holiday, since the only Christmassy aspect was the dates – in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands. I decided to walk to the top of the road to stretch my legs, a walk of five minutes or so. A specific objective, you see, and time-bound. It was obviously measurable. And it was realistic because it was achievable, or it may have been achievable because it was realistic.

Every box ticked.

At the end of the road was a path heading up a hill, behind which were the mountains. So I set out on the ten-minute walk up the hill. To a specific point in a set time. SMART again.

But this was the beginning of the mountains and mountain rules applied. Get to the top of one hill, and another appears, posing the next challenge. Or, putting it another way, fulfilling one SMART objective only led to the next.

Still, I could operate that way. From goal to goal up into the mountains. Each step small but the overall goal satisfying when I reached it.

Although, to be fair, it wasn’t that grand an achievement. I’d reached the highest point in a series of climbing hills, but beyond it, separated by a deep valley, far higher hills climbed one after the other to the tallest summit on the island – hardly massive on a global scale, at 807 metres, but nonetheless over twice the height I’d reached so far.

The question became, would we make the attempt to conquer the highest peak? The answer was purely academic when we realised that my youngest son hadn’t merely scaled it, he’d run up. What he could run, surely his brother and I could walk? It was a matter of simple self-respect to prove we could do that much.

Unfortunately, it was a project to which my carefully-honed methodology simply didn’t apply. The object was specific enough, for sure, and it was measurable (807 metres, 7 kilometres). But achievable or realistic? That remained to be seen. And it certainly wasn’t time-bound – it would take as long as it took.

In fact, when we reached the sign at the start of the path, we were told that it would take 3 hours 20 minutes, which at least set a time-objective of sorts. We debated whether to go for a 200-minute goal instead, but finally decided we really ought to be able to do better than that on a walk that amounted to 7 kilometres each way. Hardly Amundsen material.

I felt this was a major infringement of the method. “Ought to be possible” has nothing to do with being realistic. Aiming to achieve what we ought to be able to do, rather than what we are able to do, sounds seriously like setting oneself up for failure.

Still, 7 kilometres over the flat – surely we could do that in under three hours? Even if, as we admitted to each other, next to none of the walk would actually be over the flat.

Again, it was Nicky, the runner, who cut through all the hesitation.

“I’m going to run up again. I’ll turn at the top and run back down to meet you again.”

“Somewhere near the beginning,” I suggested, unambitiously.

“Don’t be silly.” He’s good at putting me in my place.

His words became a challenge. We just had to be closer to the summit than to the beginning before he got back to us. .

In the event, he reached us again 2.7 km from the top. So he managed to run rather over one and third times the full distance in the time it took us – well, me, really, as my other son Michael slowed his pace down to mine – to do a little under two-thirds.

Looking back the way we came
The patch of green was - inevitably - a golf course.
Taking scare water in an arid landscape...

Still, we ploughed on. As usual in the mountains, it felt as though the peak was crawling towards us at an appallingly slow rate, each climb only revealing a new climb beyond it, but gradually we moved upwards, ever upwards. The east coast of the island where we staying appeared further and further behind. And then, finally, with a sudden rush we made it to the top and looked out on the west and wilder coast, which we’d visited two days before.

In under two hours. So we crushed the 3 hour 20 minute time set by the signpost at the beginning – though later it did occur to me that this might have been for the full 14-km round trip. We beat that target too, but a lot less convincingly.

There was a bit of a “because it is there” element to our reaching the summit, since the sun went in just before we got there. Rather reducing the beauty of the view.

“You should have run up with me,” Nicky told us, “it was beautiful before.”

That naturally made us feel a lot better.

View from the top
Note the lowering cloud at the top of the picture.
And the rocky peninsula that had been the goal of a previous walk

Still, the view down the sheer west face of the mountains was spectacular. Especially as we could look down on the places we’d been to at sea level a on our earlier visit. We could see the café where we’d eaten. We could see the beach we’d walked along. We could see the rocky peninsula we’d reached, in the SMART objective for that occasion. .

As for the return, well that was downhill. A doddle. It took us less than half the time. Hardly worth setting an objective at all. Though it did have a prize associated with it: fish fresh from the bay with large beers to wash it down (except that I was the designated driver).

Still, that’s what I call a SMART-R objective. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound and – rewarded. .

The best kind for dealing with the exasperation of a mountain walk.

Odd sign in the mountains
Please close the door? To avoid a draught or what?

Four great ways to spend some time in the holiday season

Since the holiday season is a time when many of us find ourselves with time on our hands, here are some suggestions for entertainment not involving either excessive eating or drinking.

Rachel Brosnahan superb as Mrs Maisel in standup

Series of the year for me has been Amazon’s The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, about which I’ve already written. I make no apology for mentioning it here again – it’s good enough to deserve more than one boost. Its sparkling writing creates a galaxy of distinctive and appealing characters, all sympathetic enough to watch but with enough faults to remain human, as well as extraordinary moments of standup comedy, to make the series an exceptional contribution to the best of TV.

The theme is a Jewish New York woman who finds herself moving into standup comedy. Surrounded by two deeply contrasting families, her own and her husband’s, both distinctly Jewish but in radically different ways, she has to negotiate a way through obstacles not all of which – by any means – are of her own creation. Many of the dramas of her personal life become the raw material for her comedy sets, of which there is at least one in every episode; in fact, however, much of the dialogue in the general story is worthy of standup – even the first episode includes a quarrel with her husband in which many of her replies to him are more than worthy of a comedian.

It’s hard to pick out any one actor in this pageant of outstanding performances. The main character, Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel is superbly played by Rachel Brosnahan, well supported by Alex Borstein in the extraordinary and highly original role of her eventual friend and manager Susie. Among the other characters, one of my favourites was Kevin Pollak as Midge’s father-in-law. But there are plenty of other excellent performances.

Two other good series, both from Netflix (the second originally by the Discovery Channel), both deal with forensic psychology, but from different standpoints.

Holt McCallany (left) and Jonathan Groff in Mindhunter

Mindhunter traces the origins of psychological profiling in the FBI. This is not a historical recreation, however, but a highly plausible though fictional representation of how profiling may have emerged as an essential tool in the FBI’s armoury. I particularly enjoyed the suggestion that the motivation of criminals has become too complex to fit old models: Dillinger was hungry for money, but what drove Charles Manson? Only an understanding of psychological forces can help us understand such criminals – and, even more importantly, to help identify potential suspects.

The relationship between the two agents central to the story, well played by Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany, provides the action with a compelling and effective driving force.

The second of these series is Manhunt: Unabomber. This is based on historical events, in that it shows the real hunt for the real Unabomber – Ted Kaczynski whose trail of bombs between 1978 and 1995 left 3 dead and 23 injured. However, even here there is a high measure of fiction: the real person behind the central character, the FBI profiler whose approach enabled the perpetrator to be identified, Jim ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, played by Sam Worthington, has pointed out that the his role in the series has characteristics of several other people in what is, in effect, a composite.

I also found that the negative and obstructive attitude of Fitz’s bosses, while it effectively reinforces the drama, is probably exaggerated. Still, a series needs drama, and this one certainly has it. It also has, in Paul Bettany as Kaczynski, an extraordinary performance in a complex role.

The central theme particularly appealed to me, fascinated as I am by language: the use of forensic linguistics, the study of patterns in speech or writing to identify the perpetrator in this case.

Paul Bettany is outstanding as the Unabomber

Finally, you don’t have to be a royalist to enjoy The Crown, again from Netflix. The second season, which takes us from just after the end of Churchill’s post-war premiership up to 1963, is as enthralling as the first. Claire Foy and Matt Smith as the Queen and Prince Philip are as good as ever (for the last time: Olivia Colman is already slated to take over from Foy as an older Queen in season 3). So is Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret and Matthew Goode – an actor I never tire of seeing – as Tony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon).

Vanessa Kirby and Matthew Goode in season 2 of The Crown

In contrast to the first season, the second has more incidental themes, such as the brief liaison between Princess Margaret and Billy Wallace, about which I knew absolutely nothing. I was equally unaware that the wife of Conservative Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, had a thirty-year affair with one of his own MPs, Robert Boothby. MacMillan’s portrayal by one of the more sensitive actors I know, Anton Lessor, rekindled an interest in a PM I know too little about.

Funnily enough, although I never did much about it, I’ve been interested in MacMillan since the early eighties. My boss at the time had previously worked for the MacMillan publishing house. He told me that the old man, who always looked extremely frail, would occasionally drop by to visit staff. Their fear was that the former Prime Minister might keel over in their office, so they would pray for him to move on to someone else before they had the embarrassment of having him die at their feet.

Vicky (Victor Weisz) gave us SuperMace

I’m sure there’s more than that to the story of ‘SuperMac’ as he was christened by cartoonist Vicky (Viktor Weisz). And I’m grateful to The Crown for reawakening my curiosity about him.

Though I’m even more grateful to it for providing outstanding entertainment, along with Mindhunter, Manhunt: Unabomber and, above all the others, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel.

Season's greetings. From somewhere else

Merry Christmas to you all! Christians, non-believers, believers of any faith or none – enjoy the Christmas break!

This is the time of year when I remember the wonderful experience my wife and I had in the predominantly ‘Indian’ part of Luton, the town where we live: one 24 December, we saw a queue that seemed to be made up of both Muslims and Hindus outside a (halal) butcher and Danielle, who talks to anyone, asked what the they were waiting for.

“Turkeys,” they replied, “naturally. People all around us are celebrating. Why wouldn’t you expect us to celebrate too?”

That’s the spirit in which I wish you a merry Christmas.

We’ve certainly been having a great time. For the first time, as far as I can remember – and I’ve had 64 Christmases – we went somewhere we could enjoy it on a beach. And that’s precisely what we did today, wandering along a glorious strip of golden sand as the Atlantic beat the shore next to us – and our feet: we didn’t swim but we certainly walked through the surf. What’s more, on the way back we were treated to sunset too, a most satisfactory way to wrap up Christmas Day.

A fine way to end Christmas Day

This was on Cofete Beach, on Fuerteventura in the Canaries. The name itself was part of the pleasure: it reminded us of one least harmful of Donald Trump's blunders, his tweet which read precisely “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” 

Alternatively, it sounds like a waiter offering a choice of hot drinks: “Coffee? Tea?”

Either way, the name's fun and the place is better.

Now I know that my friends from the Antipodes – or friends who spent time down there – have all had the experience of Christmas on a beach. But to us it was new and delightful.

We had the meal, as befits a Catholic country, yesterday: the tendency is to celebrate Christmas Eve rather than the day itself. We didn’t have turkey but that wasn’t as new to us as the setting: we haven’t had that particularly dull meat for a great many years. Instead, we drove to restaurant (selected from Trip Advisor, of course) in the heart of Fuerteventura's main nature reserve.

There, surrounded by desert scrubland, bathed in sunlight and warmth, we had a leisurely meal of local specialties, cooked in olive oil and flavoured delicately with herbs. I hate to sound so unpatriotic, but we really didn’t miss the turkey at all.

Substitute for turkey. And much to be preferred

But it isn’t just the sun, the sea and the flavours that make me pleased to be here. I’m also glad to get away from the depressing atmosphere of Brexit Britain for a few days. In particular, and I feel embarrassed to use such a clichéd, indeed Dickensian, term in connection with Christmas, but it’s wonderful to be away from the humbug of its being a Christian festival in a Christian country.

Britain is far from a Christian country in religious practice, with barely one in twenty of the population regularly attending a church service. Nor, and this is far more important, is it a Christian country in its values: just in the last week we’ve read of a young man dying of cold in a Birmingham street and the children of the poor having a far higher likelihood of being hospitalised for conditions which shouldn’t require hospitalisation at all, such as asthma.

Children of the poor. Those who we should be protecting above all others. Children!

Most recently, there’s been the news that landlords are beginning to evict people on benefits, as a result of the introduction of the new system of Universal credit, which is leading to many failing to keep up their rent payments. Homelessness will rise. As though there weren’t far more than enough already.

Until we address those issues, until in fact we wean ourselves from belief in austerity, I don’t see how Britain can claim to uphold anything resembling Christian values. Christmas is just an excuse for binge drinking, binge eating and binge spending. Its Christian content has long since been lost and a secular celebration seemed more appropriate, or at least more honest.

So it’s good to be away from that pretence without foundation. Though sun, lovely beaches and delicious food help too. We’ve enjoyed our Christmas.

And it’s in that spirit too that I wish you as much fun this season as we’ve been enjoying.

Little Britain

At last! The Brexiteers have an achievement to their name. Not before time. Something real. Concrete. Tangible.

Britain is going back to old-style blue passports.

New old-style passport to the left
Old new-style passport to the right

Well, actually, not exactly. The blue isn’t quite so dark. A bit like the roar of the British lion, it’s going to be a tad more subdued.

That’s not where the parallel stops either. Unlike the old passport – indeed, unlike any British passport up until Brexit day in 2019 – it isn’t going to be quite as good for crossing borders. Currently, the passport allows us free passage to thirty or so states in Europe. But that, in the great foot-shooting exercise that we know as Brexit, the citizens of this sceptred isle have decided in their wisdom to give up.

So the new passport is both deep-hued and de-valued.

But then, that’s the way of Britain on the world stage these days. The US has already issued instructions to Britain as to what the country needs to do to get a trade deal (basically, lower standards). Bullying by the EU itself has only just started, as the brave government of Theresa May keeps finding as it tries to insist on the fulfilment of its demands.

To see the extent of the nation’s decline, we have only to look at the nature of our Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

He’s a former member of the notorious Bullingdon Club, of wealthy young men at Oxford University who would inflict criminal damage on the places they visited. They did so in complete impunity, shielded by parents with the status to protect them and the means to cover any repairs required. It made them intensely indolent, as entitled men inevitably are: if everything comes to them because of what they are rather than for what they do, why would they make an effort to do anything much?

A fellow Bullingdonian, David Cameron, used to be probably the laziest Prime Minister the country has seen. He would go unbriefed into meetings, notably with the EU, relying, I suppose, on his charm and wit to carry him through. That led to his coming out with the most ridiculous inanities. A fine example was his veto on the nations of the Eurozone using EU premises to discuss closer ties. He soon discovered he had no authority to top them, leading to his being forced to back down with bad grace when they met anyway.

It’s no surprise, then, that Boris Johnson also likes winging things. His specialism is playing the buffoon. So when he showed up in Moscow for discussions with his Russian opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, he talked about the rapid rise in exports of Kettle Chips from Britain to Russia. Lavrov looked on unsmiling, allowing Johnson his attempt at humour, but unmoved by it.

Palmerston used guboats
BoJo has Kettle Chips as a key tool of his diplomacy

To show his commitment to democracy, Johnson also met some human rights activists. Their comment? He “could clearly benefit from learning more and following the situation more closely”. 

Uninformed? Well, of course he was uninformed. Being properly informed would have required him to read something. That takes time and, if you’re to learn anything from the process, effort as well.

Some of the things Foreign Secretaries have done in the past have been shameful or at least reprehensible. But many holders of the post have been giants. Palmerston using gunboat diplomacy to ensure that Britain’s voice was truly heard around the world. Anthony Eden resigning in disgust at Neville Chamberlain’s craven behaviour towards Hitler. Ernest Bevin swallowing his pride to negotiate a humiliating but vital loan from the US. David Miliband representing Britain at the adoption of the EU Lisbon Treaty.

Well, now we have a midget in the post. A diminished role for a diminishing country. With a diminished passport.

But at least it’s blue. Hardly a major assertion of sovereignty, but perhaps we shouldn’t begrudge the Brexiteers their celebration. They are going to find precious few opportunities for cheer when Breixt really begins to bite. 

A little of what you like often comes at a price

A little of what you like does you good, they say. Sometimes, doing yourself a little good also seems to involve what you don’t like much.

Pilates is a case in point. Danielle has persuaded me to join her there twice now. Two weeks in a row. But it takes a while to get the hang of it. Take the scoring system. I mean, how do you know when you’ve won?

Well, I’ve discovered now and, let me tell you, it’s perverse. You win in Pilates when your muscles really ache. When it hurts, preferably intensely, you’re doing it well.

You read that right. It’s a sport where it’s supposed to hurt and you do it for pleasure. Talk about organised masochism. What’s more, the worse it hurts, the more good it’s doing you.

To take another example, there’s heading off on holiday. Leaving grey wet England for somewhere that ought to be warmer and brighter. Without appointments and deadlines. In pursuit of pure relaxation. But that comes at a price: the stress of making sure that everything that needs doing is done before one puts the out-of-office message up and shuts down the laptop. A painful rush. It means that once you finally get to go on holiday, you really need one.

The worst of it was that there weren’t only work tasks to complete before departure. I had a responsible domestic job too: putting a new clasp for a padlock on the gate to the garden. This was principally needed because of Toffee. She mostly behaves quite well but provoked, say by the passage of a cat, she could be tempted to rush straight through an open gate and into the road, whether a car was bearing down on her or not.

Toffee (on the right) with her friend Luci
The picture of innocence. Until she gets into trouble (again)

It was brought home to me just how carefully she needs protecting when I was on a walk with her in one of our local parks the other day. She slipped through the railings around the lake, because she’s still small enough. When I saw what she’d done, I called her over, thinking that she’d go back out by the way she’d got in, and come around to me. After all, between her and me was a tongue of lake water, with a drop of a metre or more down to it. 

She surely wouldn’t come straight towards me, ignoring the deep drop into a drop of deep water? I had barely time to think the thought and notice that she was looking straight at me and ignoring the hazard in front of her, before she came trotting in my direction, all innocent obedience, and went straight off the edge and, with a plop, into the freezing water.

Fortunately, Luton Council in its wisdom and kindness had set a steel ladder in the wall on my side of the water. I was over the fence in a second and down the bottom of the ladder calling to her as she swam round and round, looking far from comfortable with her impromptu dip. She was a little confused, swimming towards me and then away – well, who can blame her? She’d just tried coming to my call and look where that had got her – but eventually she came close enough for me to grab her collar and pull her out and on to dry land.

A wet cold poodle on cold dry land.

With a dog like that, who wouldn’t be afraid to leave her with a garden – accessible through her dog flap – not properly sealed from the road?

The clasp had to go up. But that involved doing things with screws and screwdrivers. On a wooden gate full of knots. This is not a skill in which I particularly shine. I had trouble getting more than half the screws more than half the way in.

Even with a power drill, the screwdriver bits just spun on the screw heads, driving them in not one jot. Since the failure of this exercise couldn’t possibly be attributed to the workman, I had to blame the tools. Naturally. So I ordered a new set of screw bits for the drill.

Just wonderful. They arrived the following day. And by that afternoon the clasp had been mounted, thus proving that I had no trouble getting the job done once the proper tools had arrived.

Having the right tools is crucial for a good job
Though having an actual building worker around's even better

Coincidentally, a building worker was in the house that morning, finishing off the last job outstanding on the work we started in the autumn (what a relief: finally done). It’s true that he happened to have his own power drill and screwdriver bits. It’s equally true that he has some skill with driving screws into ancient wood made hard by its knots. But that’s not the point: the job needed doing and by the afternoon it had been done.

Surely that was the extent of my responsibility, wasn’t it?

I now feel I can dedicate myself to holiday mood, with a clear conscience.