James Delingpole

The highlight of my country calendar is when I’m lucky enough to be invited to what even the host describes as ‘the world’s best worst shoot’. It’s the worst shoot because the bag is often truly atrocious. This year, for example, in the course of six or possibly seven drives — the details are hazy — we managed a total of nine birds between us. That works out at an average of one and one eighth of a bird per gun over an entire day. But still, disappointingly, we were well short of the all-time record low of three. I’d love to be able to blame this shaming tally on poor gamekeeping: ‘Of course, I’d have bagged loads more if a single bloody pheasant had flown anywhere near my peg the entire day.

How sorry I felt for the poor man who died this week stuck up a 290ft chimney in Carlisle despite desperate attempts — helicopter; cherry-picker — by the emergency services to rescue him. We’re so used to the idea that no matter how precarious or remote our plight — be it stranded kids deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand or tourists who’ve had their feet bitten off while snorkelling in Australia’s Whitsundays — those amazing emergency services will get us to safety in the end. It comes as quite a shock to be reminded that survival isn’t always inevitable. But is this a sign, I wonder, that we’ve all become a bit too pampered and complacent for our own good?

I’ve nearly finished my latest screenplay, Drift. It’s a reimagining of a British imperial atrocity which took place in Natal in 1879 and was subsequently made into a disgracefully jingoistic 1964 movie, and despite its problematic subject matter — the bad guys won — I reckon it will be a shoo-in for an award at the new-look, diversity--compliant Bafta. Idris Elba will play the Michael Caine role, obviously; I’m thinking Lenny Henry as Lieutenant Chard, and the cast of Top Boy as the various VC-winning NCOs and men of the 24th of Foot. The Zulus will all be played by actual Zulus because anything else would be cultural appropriation, but one Impi will be in a wheelchair and another will be entirely transgender to emphasise their stunning bravery.

‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When I tweeted this the other day having just dumped my offspring at Durham I got accused of being a bad father. But I don’t think I am. A bad father wouldn’t have been labouring in the dark at 12.30 a.m. getting the car packed for the long trek north. A bad father wouldn’t have forked out so liberally and uncomplainingly for all those things they spring on you when you arrive — 30-odd quid for the week’s JCR induction entertainments; 25 quid (50 if you’d been naive enough to buy new) for a gown they’ll probably only wear about twice… Obviously, I miss the little sods a bit.

You know that awful, gnawing, depressing feeling you’ve got right now? The one that notices how shockingly early the sun is setting and how shabby and played out and autumnal the borders are looking and how listless and flat everything feels what with no holidays to look forward to and the house empty of kids? The one that groans at the thought of all those uncompleted tasks and the mountain of hassle and nose-to-the-grindstone grimness which must be negotiated, somehow, between now and Christmas? Well, I hate to say this but I haven’t got it. For possibly the first time in my life since my parents shipped me off to that horrid, spartan boarding school I called Colditz, I’m experiencing early September without the faintest urge to want to kill myself.

Now that my youngest has got her A-level grades, I’m finally free to say just how much I have loathed the past 20 or so years I have spent helping my children with their English homework. This is a sad admission. After all, I studied English at university and still love reading classic literature and learning poetry by heart. But when I read that the number of 18-year-olds taking English A-level has plummeted to its lowest level since 2001 I wasn’t at all surprised. If I were that age, I’m not sure I’d choose to do English either. The first taste I had of just how grisly English has become was when I helped the Rat with his GCSEs. I don’t think at any stage he was required to complete an actual book.