Melanie McDonagh

Well, it looks like the tennis world has found its Meghan Markle. Naomi Osaka, who may in theory be Japanese, but is to all intents and purposes Californian when it comes to worldview, will no longer be taking part in the French Open because she can’t handle the post match interviews, especially when she loses. She wants to go away and look after her mental health. It’s rough luck on other Japanese tennis players (and maybe the Japan Olympic team), on her sponsors (is she too shy to do endorsements too, the ones she’s getting tens of millions of dollars for?) and on the tournament organizers. But nowadays when you say you’ve got mental health issues, there’s no arguing with that. Except, of course, there is.

Say cheese. Now, say 'British Cheese' and what comes to mind? A nice bit of Cheddar? A wedge of Stilton? Fair enough; but would you be surprised to know there are now no fewer than 800 British and Irish cheeses, many of them new? There has been an upsurge in cheesemaking in Britain. Some of the new cheeses are novelties in conception and technique, others are Continental European in style but there has also been a welcome return of at least some old fashioned and excellent county cheeses, like Cheshire (once the aristocrat of cheeses), Gloucester, Leicester and Caerphilly. It's been an astonishing phenomenon and it has happened over quite a short time, in the last two or three decades, while most of us weren’t looking.

Here’s a treat for teenagers; there’s a version of Kamala Harris’s The Truths We Hold: Young Readers' Edition in a bookshop near you. It’s one for the same section as Michelle Obama’s Becoming: Adapted for Young Readers, except with next to nothing about boys and first kisses. However, to show willing, our author gives us a little anecdote from the party for her becoming a senator for California, a result that coincided with the election of you know who. Her godson, Alexander, 9, came up to her with tears welling in his eyes. ‘“Come here, little man, what’s wrong?” Alexander looked up...his voice was trembling. “Auntie Kamala, that man can’t win. He’s not going to win, is he?

There are so many better ways to spend thirteen quid on children’s books than on Meghan Markle’s The Bench; how about something that children might actually enjoy, which isn't written to gratify the vanity of the author? Here are a few of the ones that I liked and that your children (or you) might like. The Pirate Twins by William Nicholson is just as good as the splendid Clever Bill, which also features a brave and kind little girl called Mary. But The Pirate Twins is more subversive.

We may as well get used to the idea that we’re going to be spending an awful lot of time on home turf this year. From 12 April we’re allowed staycations, or self-catering holidays, which can of course be lovely. But they do need a bit of forward planning. I spent a weekend in a lovely house in Norfolk where the only food in the place was bread, butter, teabags and instant coffee. (Memo to providers – a nice cake and some jam or honey is a good way to start.) And there was no shop in walking distance; only an honesty box outside a neighbour’s for eggs. If you’re staying somewhere with local shops and markets, support them. It’s sinking low not to spend your money locally; you should aim to bolster the micro-GDP.

Who will have a fishy on a little dishy/Who will have a fishy/When the boats come in? Far fewer of us, probably, after the new Netflix documentary, Seaspiracy, 90 minutes of devastating criticism of the fishing industry. Among the more eyecatching assertions is that the oceans will be empty of fish by 2048 and that there is no such thing as sustainable fish. The producer is a vegan called Kip Anderson who produced a similar critique of the meat industry, Cowspiracy. It doesn’t trip off the tongue, but the gist is the same: stop eating meat and fish. It's contention that the seas will be empty by 2048 has been seen off by the marine ecologist, Boris Worm, author of a 2006 report on which it is based, as an unwarranted projection into the future of trends he has identified.

It’s Lent, and you know what that means? Fish, that’s what. Once, the point of the whole fast and abstinence thing was to eschew meat, which meant eating fish instead. Indeed, the fish-fasting association was so important for the fishing industry that when the Reformation came, much Catholic practice was jettisoned, but not the obligation to eat fish in Lent. Now, there’s a further rationale, two in fact. Brexit, plus Covid, a double whammy for the industry. Post Brexit, there are endless impediments to exporting to the EU, formerly an enthusiastic taker of British fish and shellfish, unless suppliers are lucky enough to be part of a bigger consortium which handles the paperwork and even if you do the whole process is more expensive.