William Cook

Most mornings, if I’m not too hung-over, I go for a run around Ruislip Lido — a mile there, through Ruislip Woods, about two miles round the lido and a mile back again. It generally takes me about half an hour. On my way, I see woodpeckers, egrets, sparrowhawks, and the occasional Muntjac deer. It’s hard to believe you’re in London, at the arse end of the Metropolitan line, surrounded by bland suburbia — John Betjeman’s Metroland. Ruislip Woods is the largest slice of natural woodland in Greater London: 726 acres of oak, beech and hornbeam, and the lido is its pearl. People have gathered timber from this scruffy forest since god knows when.

In Westminster, all the general election chatter is about Brexit. Will Tory Remainers turn Lib Dem? Will Labour leavers desert Jeremy Corbyn? As polling day draws near, however, the Europe obsession must recede. Politicians may not be able to look past last year’s referendum, but voters will have moved on. MPs will find that, as before, the great issue of our time will be just one of many on the doorsteps. This summer’s battleground won’t be Brussels. It will be suburbia. Domestic matters will decide whether Theresa May returns to Downing Street with a fat majority, and no one is more domesticated than the average suburbanite. We are intensely local. We want good local schools and good local hospitals — we don’t like grand projects like HS2.

Germany lost a football match but won a moral victory last night, when Borussia Dortmund were defeated 3-2 at home by Monaco, in the first leg of the quarter finals of the Champions League. To restage a major fixture just 24 hours after a terrorist attack was a remarkable achievement. To restage it when the Dortmund team bus had come under direct attack, landing one of its players in hospital, was nothing short of incredible. Dortmund fans gave bed and board to stranded Monaco supporters, Monaco fans sang Dortmund songs in the stadium, and both teams gave it their all (every Dortmund player was given the option not to play, but all played regardless). A thrilling game was the best response, and the result was incidental. This was European sport at its finest.

The news about the machete man in the Louvre broke just as my Eurostar was approaching Paris. Was this just a one-off, or were there more terrorist attacks to come? In the Gare du Nord that lunchtime, the atmosphere was humdrum. Armed policemen passed by like ghosts, unseen and unnoticed. For Parisians, these incidents have become a normal part of daily life. I figured the Louvre would still be cordoned off, so I headed for the Musée d'Orsay. If the Louvre attack was part of a co-ordinated assault on the cultural institutions of the French capital, the Musée d'Orsay would be another prime target. Would the museum be closed, as a precaution? Would the visitors stay away? Neither. People were queueing to get in, tourists and locals. The mood in the queue was laid back.

I’m sitting by the pool in a lush Moroccan garden playing chess with Nigel Short, and I feel like an amateur boxer who’s stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson. This is the man who took on World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov. He could destroy me in an instant. Actually, there’s no need. In a few moves I’ve destroyed myself. After this chess weekend at Ezzahra, a chic retreat in Marrakech, I’d hoped to show Britain’s greatest grandmaster how much I’ve learnt. Instead, I end up playing like a complete idiot. Thankfully Nigel is a perfect gent, accepting my abject resignation with good grace, and my humiliation is soon forgotten over a delicious dinner on the poolside terrace.

In 1942, a man called Manfred Alexander turned up, unannounced, on my grandfather’s doorstep in Berlin. My grandfather knew him only slightly. He hadn’t seen him for several years. Like countless Jews, Manfred had been herded onto an eastbound train the year before, bound for God knows where. He’d ended up in a Concentration Camp in Minsk, run by the Ukrainian SS. There, after a terrible winter, a German guard whom he hardly knew hid him beneath the coal in the tender of a steam train which was carrying wounded German soldiers back to Berlin. Back in Berlin, cold and hungry, Manfred headed straight for my grandfather’s apartment on Grolmanstrasse. It was opposite the police station but it was the only address he knew. My German grandfather was no saint.