More from life

I went last week to see the justly praised production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers at English National Opera, and I didn’t see a single black face there, nor even much dark hair (except in the case of Melvyn Bragg who, though now greying a bit, still seems to have Ronald Reagan’s gift for keeping white hairs at bay). This chimed with the finding of the Warwick Commission on the arts in Britain that much the greater part of live-music audiences, theatre-goers and gallery visitors is old, white and middle-class. Even though this wasn’t actually the reason for the Arts Council’s drastic decision to curtail ENO’s funding — this was because of its allegedly shambolic management — it easily might have been.

On the face of it, the moral case against tax avoidance seems pretty straightforward. If you’re a UK taxpayer and benefit from public goods and services, then you should pay your fair share of tax. If you’re paying less than that, then you’re a free rider. You’re breaking the social contract. But what do we mean by ‘fair share’? The standard defence of tax avoidance is that it’s perfectly legal — if it wasn’t, it would be tax evasion — and the social contract only obliges people to obey the law, not to pay more tax than they have to. To maintain that people are morally obliged to pay an additional amount of tax, over and above what they’re legally required to pay, is a tricky position to defend.

I was listening to the radio the other morning to hear people complaining about the huge cuts in the number of traffic police patrolling English roads. This meant that drivers would disobey motoring laws with impunity, they said. They would babble away on their mobile phones, unfasten their seat belts, and generally break the rules of the road in the knowledge that they were most unlikely to get caught. The only things left for them to fear would be speed cameras. As a result, road deaths, of which there were already more than 1,700 in Britain last year, would go shooting up. A grim outlook indeed. But wait, there is hope on the horizon. This is the exciting prospect of the driverless car.

Banks only lend money to those who can prove they don’t need it and it has not been a happy few months for racing with one trainer after another giving up the unequal struggle and shutting the stable doors. The only thing that could make it worse for many small yards is an election victory in May for the Greens: they have vowed, if they win power, to outlaw zoos and circuses and a ban on horseracing clearly would not be far behind. I have had my problems too. Gremlins from outer space this week seized control of my laptop and have locked away my racing notes behind an immovable screen that resembles an early Jackson Pollock.

Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes and comments and observations about life; the next he is gone. What has happened to that store of wit and wisdom acquired over a lifetime, to that particular way of understanding and looking at things, to that unique muddle of thoughts and feelings that every individual has? Even if someone has gone to heaven, it is difficult to imagine that he has taken these things with him. If he did, they would hardly be compatible with eternal rest.

Never mind David Cameron. Are you participating in the Great Debate about an event of national significance that stirs the blood of millions? No, I don’t mean the General Election: racing is in a tizzy about who should lead the television coverage of this year’s Grand National since the sainted Clare Balding (whom God preserve) has opted on the big day to cover instead the predictable procession in the Oxford v. Cambridge Boat Race. Channel Four, in whose hands Aintree coverage rests, has been semi-publicly agitating whether to allow Clare’s fellow racing presenter Nick Luck to replace her in fronting the show or to go outside for a ‘big name’, who will supposedly resonate with the wider non-racing public who tune into jump-racing just once a year.

It’s 15 years since I first wrote an article about the threat to the nation of the wild boar; but only now, following the death of a driver in a collision with one of these fearsome beasts on the M4 in Wiltshire, is anyone taking any notice (and not very much notice at that). The government is planning to introduce the same kind of road warning signs for wild boar as those that already exist for deer, horses, toads and ducks. ‘Road safety in the context of wild boars is an emerging issue that needs to be addressed,’ says roads minister John Hayes. ‘The addition of a warning sign for wild boar in areas with populations of the animals would be a sensible step to encourage people to slow down and watch out.’ It is certainly a good idea to watch out.

For the past two and a half years my brother John has been living next door to me in the Northamptonshire countryside. We have both been most of the time alone in our separate houses, 25 yards apart, and, whenever I’ve been there, I have shared at least one meal a day with him. It was a very cosy and mutually supportive set-up. Then, on New Year’s Eve, he suddenly died. His death wasn’t exactly premature — he was 87 and increasingly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease — but it came as a shock nevertheless. On the two last evenings of his life he had come over to my house to have supper and watch his daughter Anna star with Miranda Richardson in the three-part television adaptation of E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia.

I’ve had various ailments during my first 74 years — the worst being those induced by smoking, such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis — but never before have I suffered from back pain. I know many people who have, and I have witnessed the miseries they have suffered — their months spent lying on the floor, their desperate search for suitable treatments, their failed operations. I had begun to think that I might be immune to this particular affliction, attributing this to the fact that I have rather a short back.