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At last I have found a summer festival I can attend in good faith without the possibility of Jeremy Corbyn turning up. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there seemed to be no festive gatherings planned which Corbyn wouldn’t attend, with his retinue of Trot imbeciles. In response, the philosopher Roger Scruton very kindly invited me to join him at a shindig hosted by the psychopathic tweed-jacketed fox-stranglers of the Countryside Alliance. It was a generous offer and I hope Roger will take it in good part if I say I would rather perform a colonoscopy on Diane Abbott than mix with that lot. Instead, I have found a Corbyn-free venue of bacchanalia which both Roger and I can attend and enjoy: Woman Fest, which takes place near Frome in mid-August.

Rebecca Steinfeld (37) and Charles Keidan (41) have a moral objection to marriage. They’ve been together since 2010, have two very small children, but haven’t tied the knot. This, they say, is because the law doesn’t offer a knot they’re comfortable tying. ‘Charlie and I see each other as partners already in life, and we want to have the status of being partners in law,’ says Rebecca. They hold (and you may agree or disagree but it’s not a crazy view) that the concept described by the word ‘marriage’ is asymmetrical between the man and the woman, and inextricably tangled with religion and with cultural attitudes this couple (and others) may not share.

‘So, Professor Shin, tell us what you really think about cryptocurrencies.’ I’m guessing that’s the brief the Bank for International Settlements (the Basel-based central bank of central banks) gave economist Hyun-Song Shin to write a chapter for its annual report, published this week. His response delivers a serious kicking to the whole befuddled concept of ‘permissionless’ online currencies that ‘promise to replace trust in long-standing institutions such as commercial and central banks’. For a start, he argues, Bitcoin and its ilk are an environmental disaster because their systems consume enough electricity to power Switzerland.

Next month the National Health Service turns 70. The institution is greatly loved, and not for nothing. The fear of ill-health runs deep in most of us and is ineradicable; but the fear of not being able to afford treatment, which must haunt most of the world’s population, has been abolished in Britain — and for that inestimable benefit we have the NHS to thank. It is, of course, possible to overrate the quality of this country’s health care. Many do. All things considered, and in a world of first-, second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-rate medical provision, I’d say we British get a second-rate health service for the price of a third-rate one. However, funds are not unlimited, and second-rate isn’t bad.

I have been scouring the internet trying to find a right-wing festival to take the family to this summer. I don’t necessarily mean a kind of Nuremberg affair; just some sort of gathering where we won’t be hectored about the refugees and the NHS by simpering millennials with falafel between their ears. A place where you can be sure that the next act on won’t be bloody Corbyn, backed by a mass of lobotomised sheep chanting his name to that dirge by the White Stripes. Mind you, I wish I’d been at the Eden Sessions, a hugely right-on shindig held at the UK’s most stridently eco--friendly venue, the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Is it all right for the Muslim parents of children at British state schools to prevent their sons and daughters from being friends with non-Muslim kids? And is it sensible? These questions have been knocking around my head like a pair of trapped moths, unable to find a way out. Quite by coincidence and on separate occasions, in the past month I’ve met two (non-Muslim) women whose children have had trouble at Muslim-dominated state schools. The kids made friends easily in their first term, said the mothers, but as the months went by it became harder to stay pals. Their schoolmates never invited them home, nor would they come round for playdates or parties. The friendships faded away and the kids were left confused.

‘Dad, am I driving like a normal driver yet? Are you relaxing like a normal relaxed passenger or are you still worrying all the time we’re going to crash?’ I love going for driving practice with Girl. It takes me right back to that precious late adolescence I’d almost forgotten: the period where the thing that matters to you more than anything in the world is the imminent prospect of freedom behind the steering wheel of your very own car. Think of it! Any time you like you can just get into the driver’s seat, start the engine and go anywhere you want. Scotland. Cornwall. Across the Channel on a ferry. To mates’ parties, beaches, the pub, to uni… I quite understand why Girl is so keen.