Stuart Reid

Harry was so scared when we entered him in the Best Veteran category in the Friends of Tooting Common Dog Show that he tried to jump out of the ring, and when he found he couldn’t break free he clung on to me for dear life. Harry was so scared when we entered him in the Best Veteran category in the Friends of Tooting Common Dog Show that he tried to jump out of the ring, and when he found he couldn’t break free he clung on to me for dear life. He didn’t win, in spite of his extraordinary sweetness and beauty. Harry is an eight-year-old English springer spaniel from Battersea Dogs Home and we got him last December. The trouble with Harry is that he is not quite right in the head. In fact, he is bipolar, and goes through his cycle every 24 hours.

I don’t mean to diss the recent sunshine, but hasn't the rain today been happy and glorious? An hour ago there were ancient, damp smells on the streets of my south London neighbourhood: of dust and earth and grass. G. K. Chesterton was very fond of rain. Here is part of a letter he wrote to E. C. Bentley 102 years ago: “I have just been out and got soaking and dripping wet; one of my favourite dissipations. I never enjoy weather so much as when it is driving, drenching, rattling, washing rain... Seldom have I enjoyed a walk so much. My sister water was all there and most affectionate.

It is greatly to Jonathan Aitken's credit that he has come to the aid of Lord Browne in today's Guardian. It is also greatly to the credit of the Guardian that it commissioned the piece. Aitken does not offer false comfort (he commends "wintry realism" to Browne) and he does not make light of perjury, saying that his own conviction, following his difficulties with the Guardian, was "fair and just". He does, however, provide a welcome relief from the knee-jerk defences of Browne inspired by homophilia and the vengeful attacks inspired by an almost Islamist love of "justice" -- ie, punishment. The tabloids grow fat by selling hate, lust, fear, greed and envy.

In Westminster Cathedral a dozen or so deaf mutes are doing the Stations of the Cross. They have reached the 14th station, ‘Jesus is laid in the tomb’. A priest leads the prayers in sign language. ‘We, too, O God, will descend into the grave whenever it shall please Thee, as it shall please Thee, and wheresoever it shall please Thee.’ It is a humbling sight. The cathedral, though, is not to everyone’s taste. Many visitors are unhappy about the stations themselves, which were carved by the sex maniac Eric Gill. Others are distressed by the children’s paintings and Third World displays that appear from time to time in side chapels. Yet the cathedral is authentically Catholic.

My granddaughter was christened at the Brompton Oratory on Saturday. Although the day was muggy and storms had been forecast, I am sorry to say that there was no thunder and lightening. Like Hector Berlioz recalling the circumstances of his birth — ‘I came into the world quite naturally, unheralded by any of the signs which, in poetic ages, preceded the advent of remarkable personages’ — I was a little put out that Holly’s reception into the Church was not accompanied by some celestial commotion. Other than that, the only bleak thing about the service was that it forced me yet again to confront my own perfidy: over the years, and with barely a thought, I have broken most of the baptismal vows I have made as a parent and godparent.

Nothing is more important to a journalist than his integrity. The founders of the Independent were men of such unyielding principle that they would not allow their journalists to go on freebies. On other papers most journalists handled the integrity/freebie issue in the time-honoured fashion: by abusing any hospitality they were given — trashing a hotel room, getting weeping drunk, pawing the mayor’s wife — and then writing a mocking piece about those who had squandered fine food, wine and linen on them. That way, the hacks reasoned, nobody could say that they had been bought. Their honour was intact. These days I don’t have the energy for integrity. It’s a young man’s caper. So here comes the plug.

New York It’s as easy as pie to get through Checkpoint Charlie. The very agreeable Hispanic immigration officer at Kennedy asked me to place my index fingers, one at a time, on a scanning machine. My prints were instantly checked against the dabs of (I suppose) suicide bombers, anarchists, white slavers, drugs barons, porn kings, and those who, wittingly or unwittingly, have in the past 60 years engaged in genocide (on however small a scale). But... no match. I was clean; and I was through immigration faster than on any previous visit to the United States. The new security arrangements may be daft, but they are not yet burdensome. Now that the Feds have my prints, however, I shall have to keep my hands to myself on future visits.

It's no good complaining. The rail network inhabits the wrong kind of universe. If the sun shines for more than two days, the network goes down. You can't argue with science. In the last heatwave I travelled back to London from Brighton in a train whose air-conditioning had given up under the strain. I rang the customer-services office to complain that passengers couldn't even open the windows. Less than a fortnight later I got a letter from South Central. It was not an apology. It was a patronising explanation of the principles of air-conditioning. It doesn't work, see, if you open the windows. The point is, however, that if it is not working, the only way to get some air is to open the windows, or to break them.

To Paris to attend a convivium on the Continuing Revolution, presided over by Dr Thomas Fleming. Dr Who? Tom Fleming is editor of the monthly magazine Chronicles, based in Rockford, Illinois, and big chief of the palaeoconservative movement – though movement may be too grand a word to describe an engagingly barmy political army that has perhaps 20,000 followers in the US and fewer than 20 here. The reactionary and pacific – but not pacifist – palaeoconservatives (palaeos) are the sworn enemies of the hawkish and progressive neoconservatives (neocons).