More from life

As the holidays draw to a close, Italian newspapers have been reporting with perplexity and distaste on the outlandish behaviour of foreign tourists in Italy, by which they mean young people from northern European countries. One report told of a couple making love in broad daylight on a bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice, the Ponte degli Scalzi (which, as a commentator pointed out, means ‘Bridge of the Barefooted’, not ‘Bridge of the Bare-bottomed’). Other reports talked of people sunbathing naked in public places or picnicking in large groups under the colonnades in St Mark’s Square. Venice suffered most from these excesses, but nowhere was immune.

Mrs Oakley returned from her latest book club with an uplifting story. The Mother Superior of an Irish convent was 95 and failing. On her deathbed she asked for a drink and a nun went for fresh milk. Espying the bottle of John Jameson occasionally used by the visiting Father O’Shaughnessy for refreshment, Sister Agnes poured a generous measure into the cup of milk. As the Mother Superior drank, one of the nuns asked her what piece of advice she would leave them with for their lives ahead. Suddenly sitting bolt-upright in bed, the old lady declared, ‘Whatever you do, don’t get rid of that cow!’ That sums up how I now feel about Ascot’s Shergar Cup.

If I get to choose where to spend my last day on earth it will probably be at Glorious Goodwood. Goodwood is Ascot without the added vulgarity, Aintree without the spray tans, a garden party spiced up with some of the most ruthlessly competitive sport you can hope to watch. The Dash at Epsom apart, the five and six furlong races at Goodwood are the fastest you are likely to see horses running anywhere. It was all about speed, too, when the mighty Kingman prevailed in the mile-long Sussex Stakes duel with Toronado. Champion jockey Richard Hughes had his game plan ready for Kingman’s rider James Doyle. He aimed to kick on first off a slow pace and steal a length or two in the hope that Kingman wouldn’t respond fast enough to catch him.

I’m due to speak at an Intelligence Squared debate on Saturday and I’m worried that I might be on the wrong side. The motion is ‘Monogamy equals monotony’ and I’m opening the batting for the opposition. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m perfectly happy to make the case for monogamy. But the problem with framing the debate in this way is that it invites those of us opposing the motion to argue that, in fact, being faithful to one person is every bit as exciting as sleeping with whomever we choose.

If I haven’t mentioned my poultry for a while, it’s because the subject has been too depressing. I had been very fond of my ducks and chickens until the constant attacks on them by foxes began to harden my heart. I had protected them in every way I could, short of keeping them cooped up all the time; but as a fox kept on killing them all the same, I almost stopped caring. Acceptance of their seemingly inevitable fate brought with it a loss of interest. If they were going to die, I must learn to be indifferent. For a while, I felt callous only about the ducks, six out of my flock of 14 ducks had been killed, but only one of my nine chickens had gone.

A few years ago, a family friend described my father as being a bit like Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House, by which he meant that he neglected his own family in favour of helping others. By way of proof, he cited the famous occasion when my father abandoned all of us on Christmas Day to spend time with some elderly widows in the local cemetery, pouring cups of tea into the graves of their dear departed husbands. He had a point. My father wasn’t a deadbeat dad in the conventional sense of the word, but he was a workaholic. The only time I can remember him playing football with me was on my birthday — a huge treat. The rest of the time he was either at work or ensconced in his office at the top of the house.

Fretful horses who waste their energies — and often their racing potential — ceaselessly pacing their stable dormitories are known as ‘box walkers’. Some trainers merit a similar description, dragging nervously on one racecourse cigarette too many. It isn’t sharing the washing-up but their teeth that have left their nails worn down to the quick. Their brows are furrowed as they saddle up their hopes. Instead of enjoying a joke with an owner’s wife their eyes flicker nervously to their four-legged charges skittering around the paddock for fear they are sweating up. Nervousness is easily transmitted between man and beast and I always feel more comfortable when the handler responsible for the horse carrying my tenner looks relaxed.

Unlike 99 per cent of my colleagues, I was quite touched by John Bercow’s comment about how fed up he is with jokes about his height. ‘Whereas nobody these days would regard it as acceptable to criticise someone on grounds of race or creed or disability or sexual orientation, somehow it seems to be acceptable to comment on someone’s height, or lack of it,’ he said. OK, maybe taking the mickey out of someone for being short isn’t quite on the same level as, say, murdering them for being black or homosexual, but I think he has a point. I say this for two reasons. The first, obviously, is because I hope to become an MP one day and have a vested interest in sucking up to the Speaker. The second, though, is because I’m a bit of a short-arse myself.