Grammar bug

The last two blogs harking back to my school days have prompted some thoughts on the latest Conservative Party rumpus involving the resignation of Graham Brady as European spokesman in protest at David Cameron, The Tory leader's decision to abandon the party's traditional commitment to the grammar school system in favour of city academies.

I don't know much about the academies but I do have experience of grammar schools. I went to Wheelwright Grammar School for boys in Dewsbury and, when my two oldest boys were ready, I sent them to the Royal Grammar School, Guildford.

I guess this suggests I'm a big fan of grammar schools but this is not the case. I think they had some good points but there were a lot of flaws too.

My secondary education was based on getting through the 11-plus lottery which did nothing more than measure your ability to perform to a certain standard in a basic intelligence test. It didn't measure commitment, enthusiasm, ambition or hard work. It didn't seek to find out whether you were a well adjusted human being, nor try to discover anything about your table manners, your passing skills at soccer, your health and well being, your loyalty, honesty, integrity, affability or eagerness to learn. All it did was score your performance on a single day in a single test.

Oddballs and misfits

That this test allowed all kinds of oddballs, misfits and undesirables in to the system while excluding some honest hard-working young people who deserved a better break in life, should be a source of regret.

In a working class town like Dewsbury to pass that test was everything. To fail was to be branded for life at the tender age of 11, to walk, metaphorically at least, through a door marked "second class education".

In fact the door should have said "third class" because even the state grammar schools could not match the quality offered by the best of the public schools.

The shame about those state grammars is that they simply tried to copy the public schools, almost slavishly. One thing I hated about them was the way they made visible distinctions between the teaching staff. If you held a university degree you could wear a gown when teaching whereas those who only had teaching certificates were condemned to wear their "civvies".

My school had some fine teachers, not all of them degree holders. It also had some pretty bad ones, particularly in languages and mathematics. I was lucky enough to study under the best maths teacher who rarely had failures at O-level. Unlike modern GCES that seem to give a grade for almost any level of work, it really was possible to fail an O-level and to get a distinction meant far more than it does today.

There was the odd sadist too but that was normal for the time. The chance of catching a well-aimed board rubber on your temple was an everyday hazard that kept you on your toes.

One of my best teachers was a man we called "Bert" Throp although Bert wasn't his real name. He would play Judy Collins records in lessons. He introduced us to the work of northern writers like John Braine, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse.

Gritty stuff

These people were writing about our own back yards. It was gritty, contemporary stuff that meant something to us. Bert would speak our own language, swearing sometimes, and talk to us as young adults. He didn't think much to grading. Some English teachers would try to stimulate our writing by setting essays designed to stir our imaginations with titles such as "the day the world ended". Bert would ask us to write from life. There was a big difference.

In effect, he was saying to us: "Your lives matter just as much as the lives of those rustics in Thomas Hardy novels or the grand families portrayed by Jane Austen."

He got through to boys who might have had problems at home that were effecting their work and self-esteem. One boy went from bottom of class to the top in one term. Whether either position was deserved is neither here nor there. The fact is that boy had been a bully because he had been bullied at home. Bert's recognition gave him confidence. It made the rest of us feel better too and he started to make friends.

Educational straight jacket

For those of a non-conformist nature, as I was, the discipline of grammar school was a straight jacket. John, my eldest son, feels his school engaged far too much in spoon feeding the pupils, stimulating little creative thinking.

I loved poetry but recall blanking completely in a lesson that tried to explain metering. I just didn't get it. In fact everything that tried to make language or art conform to rules I found a real turn off. Today I have no no great understanding of grammatical structures and arrange words instead in a way that seems natural. It works just fine.

This is probably too critical of grammar schools. I think that overall I had a reasonable foundation in school education that stimulated efforts at self-education later on outside the academic system. But a love of reading that has probably been of greatest benefit came from my family background, rather than school.

Instinctively a co-educational system seems healthier than all boys' or all girls' schools. George goes to a co-educational school and has no difficulty getting on with girls. A former grammar school friend who went in to the education system where he has been able to compare different delivery systems at first hand, has retained no great love of grammar schools. My own experience is tinged somewhat by nostalgia. I had some good times at school, some bad times too. But it wasn't what I would call a formative experience and that's a pity.

Grammar schools should stay for those who choose them but I don't think they should be presented as a model for the future. We can do better than that.

Budgie trouble

The mention of my old friend Geoff Crummock in that last blog reminded me of the bad luck he used to have with his pets.

He had a guinea-pig for a while and fed it carrots and other bits of vegetables. The guinea-pig didn't do much so the carrots and vegetables were piled pretty high in its cage before Geoff noticed it was dead.

There was also a budgie (no-one round our way called them budgerigars) which used to fly around his kitchen and perch on the creel. Most kitchens had a creel in those days before spin-dryers. It was a slatted wooden device on which you hung the washing. A rope and pulley system allowed it to be hoisted up to the ceiling. My dad used to say that Monday (washing day) at our house resembled Nelson's signal at Trafalgar - England expects.....

The disappearance of the creel was a red letter day in social advancement, as significant as the arrival of a telephone. I was working before we had a phone at my parents' home. I know because I paid to have it installed.

Anyway one day Geoff's mum was lowering the creel to hang some washing and the budgie was perched on the rope. Suddenly there was an almighty screech as she hoisted the washing and the budgie's feet were mangled in the pulley.

But at least this budgie fared a little better than the one that had been his auntie's pride and joy. She really loved that budgie and cleaned its cage every day. In fact she polished its perch so much that it slipped off and broke its back on the bottom of the cage. No, you wouldn't have wanted to be a budgie in the Crummock family.

Old friends

An unexpected consequence of running my own web site and blog has been the occasional messages I get from old friends who I haven't seen for years. A couple of weeks ago I heard from Melvin Holmes, station manager at Mirfield Fire Station. You have to have brains and brawn for that kind of job and Melvin is lacking in neither.

We first met at Carlton Road infants school in Dewsbury when Melvin beat me up in the playground. After that we were inseparable for six years. Well, not quite. I was also great friends with my cousin Andrew who also beat me up on one occasion although that was more of a full blown fight. Andrew and Melvin tried to beat each other up once. I recall it was quite a bloody affair, not much quarter given.

I was a very good swimmer as a child but Andrew was always a better swimmer. Melvin couldn't swim much at all when I met him. Then he learned and became good enough to beat me. Has any of this left me psychologically scarred, cast in the role of perpetual loser? I think it probably has which explains why I have a dog in order to know what it is to exercise some power. Except that the dog ignores me most of the time. He's made it pretty plain that he's a dog, not an underdog.

Melvin's message had me thinking about Arch Dyson. Melvin and I went to different schools when aged 11 and picked up new friends along the way. In the new school I found myself sitting close to someone called Arthur Dyson who had become Arch Dyson by the sixth form.

Arch never beat me up. He wasn't a beating up kind of guy even though he could have packed a punch had he been that way inclined. He used his wits, and wit, to keep on the right side of the bullies.

Everyone, apart from the loners, had their own school "rat pack", kids who hung out together. Arch was part of mine in early secondary school, a little less so in the sixth form when he had formed a band that elevated him to rock star status at least within the school bounds.

In those early years, along with Arch, there was Geoff Crummock, Simon Dormand and Andy Bullivant. Geoff went in to graphic design, Simon is a school head now and Andy is a finance director. Arch got a job shifting the stage props around on Noel Edmonds' Swap Shop. The next thing I knew he was producing Top of The Pops.

He invited me down to a recording once. I was wearing a pin-striped suit and with my grey hair looked far too old to be gyrating in front of camera. I couldn't believe how small that set was. There were camera booms crossing the tiny dance floor all the time, knocking down dancers like nine pins. It's amazing what they achieved with a lot of smoke and mirrors. Arch went on to produce the Paul Whitehouse Experience and he's still working in light entertainment as far as I know.

In fact I Googled him and saw that he had produced a game show called "Classic Comeback" for TV Gold. Someone wrote this about him: "We recognise the director credit for Arch Dyson, a proven master of turning low-budget programmes into entertainment, and it's great to see that he's lost none of his magic."

With the others we did a lot together as kids. School would let us out at lunch time and we would roam around looking for things to do. We found a dilapidated farmhouse once and set about demolishing it. We'd taken down a few of the walls using a big beam as a battering ram before a farmer appeared at the other side of the field who did not seem to appreciate our efforts. So we left the scene quickly. But what a great way to let your hair down. I suppose there'd be a law against it now. I suppose there was then.

Another source of amusement was to climb through a trapdoor in the geography room and walk around in the eves. You could even get out on to the roof. One of the boys, Steven Gray, known to everybody as "Gibber", went up there one day and painted "Gibber" on the roof. It didn't take the most painstaking of detection work among the teachers to identify the culprit. Happy days.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Pole

When I was young I used to read about the exploits of Scott of the Antarctic, David Livingstone and Ernest Shackleton. I liked the idea of travelling and exploring distant parts of the globe.

What training would I need, I wondered? A military career perhaps, or something using geography or cartography?

As it turns out today such skills are not nearly as useful as those of the stand-up comedian. Ask any BBC producer.

Last month there was Victoria Wood floating around the globe's former pink bits in "Victoria's Empire." Prior to that there were the travelogues featuring comedy actor Michael Palin. Even Billy Connolly has turned his touring in to a kind of travel epic. Now I see that Channel Five has hopped on the bandwagon with "Paul Merton in China."

I wonder if Scott told jokes about penguins or whether Mungo Park ever played the Glasgow Empire? Were Lewis and Clark role models for Laurel and Hardy? After all, Laurel and Hardy did make a film called Way out West.

The BBC has missed a trick or two in the past. Otherwise we might have seen Morcambe and Wise on the Eiger or Tommy Cooper of Khartoum. At least the Carry On team made Carry On Up The Jungle.

What does the future hold? Maybe we'll see Peter Kay in Amarillo The Hard Way or Jasper Carrot in Carrot Continental or Rowan Atkinson in the Thin Blue Planet. The possibilities are endless.

Grass over

If you happened to have been anywhere near Nelson's column in London these past two days you would have seen that the paving stones in Trafalgar Square had been covered in grass.

It was a tourism promotion to highlight London's parks and fields, the city's green lungs. The grass only stayed two days before it was moved to one of the parks. But in the short time it was there hundreds of people took the opportunity to stretch out and enjoy it.

Every City needs its fields but unless the green spaces are protected there is no hope of saving them from developers. Once developed, the spaces never revert to grass.

When the City authorities in New York were seeking ideas for a fitting memorial on the site of the twin towers I thought that the best thing would have been to have grassed over the space so that New Yorkers could enjoy one patch of peace in their otherwise hectic lives.

But it wasn't going to happen. The human race is conceited enough to believe that everything on this planet is improved by human interference when the reverse is true.
So New York is building its Freedom Tower. I'm sure the final structure will be beautiful. But so is grass.

A hangover waiting to happen

"Would you like to join me in some wine tasting?" asked Jon, an old friend whose convivial company I have enjoyed during many a post and pre-match drinking session when England have been playing at Twickenham.

"Do I have to spit it out?" I asked.

"Not if you don't want to."

So we went along to the London International Wine and Spirits Fair at ExCel, the giant exhibition centre in Docklands.

This place is a hangover waiting to happen. We started on the New Zealand whites where Jon did the business, nose first, a bit of a swill, a sip, a slosh round the mouth, then out in to the spittoon. It seemed an awful waste but I couldn't see any other way of getting through the afternoon.

"What did it taste of?" he says.

"Wine?"

"Didn't you catch the vanilla and the tinge of marmalade?"

It's wine, not breakfast, I'm thinking. It reminds me of that Monty Python sketch where John Cleese says: "I don't know much about art but I know what I like."

The best commentary I seem to be capable of is pretty banal. My descriptions alternate between "heavy" and "light" with an occasional "fruity" slotted somewhere in between.

Meanwhile the spittoon is becoming underused, particularly when we try some classy French and Australian reds. Then there were the Hungarian pudding wines, a few whiskys, some rather good cognac, port and finally the champagne.

Some counters have a plate of crackers to help you restore your palette but, since I'd missed lunch I was grabbing them by the fistful.

Among the more esoteric choices we taste some Japanese whisky (not great), some Welsh whisky (I prefer their lamb) and some Lebanese wine from the Bekaa Valley. Imagine trying to make wine in the Bekaa Valley. We also sip some McNab biodynamic wine.

Biodynamic wine might be described as organic wine with frills. The frills, like the name, were created by an Austrian scientist called Rudolf Steiner. They include treating the soil in which the vine is growing with manure that has spent the winter buried in a cow horn. I kid you not.

Better still, you must include some flower heads of yarrow fermented in a stag's bladder and dandy lion heads fermented in cow mesentery (look it up. I did). Oh and don't forget the lunar rhythms. They're important although the wine dealer referred to this preparation as the "voodoo bit". I don't think they include eye of newt, but don't hold me to that.

So how did it taste? Not bad. But if I had gone to all that trouble preparing my vines I'd want to hear something a bit better than "not bad."

Among the best of the reds that we tasted I would pick out the Jaboulet Rhone Crozes-Hermitage. You wouldn't want to send that one back (or spit it out). The champagne we tried and liked was Duval-Leroy. The Cuvee Femme is excellent and so it should be since the grapes are harvested from the best bits of the best plots among the Grand Cru villages. Like John West salmon then.

I make a note: must remember to spit more at wine tastings. I'm beginning to slur my speech as Jon suggests we go for a beer.Well it had been a tough afternoon in one way or another. I think we'd earned it.

Accidental angling

I had a good chat with Charles Rangeley-Wilson this morning. If you saw any of his excellent TV series, The Accidental Angler, on BBC 2 earlier this year you will understand that his mission is to tell stories - or let the stories tell themselves - through fishing in different parts of the world.

He tells me he didn't feel comfortable with the BBC format for this kind of thing where everything has to be thoroughly researched and scripted with producers going out on "reccie" trips beforehand.

"I like the idea of turning up and seeing what happens, letting things unfold for themselves," he says.

A case in point was a record Mahseer, seen in the programme mounted on a museum wall in India. "Only the fish hadn't been on the wall until the researcher arrived. It was stuck down the back of a filing cabinet and only brought out when they knew we were making a programme. Wouldn't it have been so much better if the cameras had found it where it had been stored originally?"

Charles did well to get backing from the BBC for the original series. But plans for a second series have been dropped due to lack of funds. This seems ironic given his argument that a series could be made more cheaply with less time spent on the preparation work.

Anyway, now he has taught himself to use a film camera, learned the editing software and has set about making a one-off film about bone fishing in the Bahamas. It's deliberately raw. But then, that's real life. Real life is not about contrived meetings and well-worn anecdotes. It's certainly not about Victoria Wood - fine actor, writer and comedian that she is - wandering the globe on some pretty flimsy premise to make a series about the British Empire.

This is format TV of the worst kind. You can just imagine someone at the BBC saying: "It worked well with Michael Palin so let's get another comic to front up a travel series." They tried the same with Alan Titchmarsh believing, erroneously that they could transfer him from his gardening slot on to a much bigger landscape to present a nature series. It didn't work.

People are getting fed up with format TV, just as they are tiring with format journalism. Congratulations to Rangeley-Wilson for going his own way. I hope he succeeds.

NB. Have just finished my latest column for the FT and will be publishing it in the fishing section of my website on Saturday. It's about mayfly and museums.(Note added later: If you wondered where this column had gone so did I. Apparently coverage of the Chelsea bloody flower show pushed it out so it is the following Saturday. In the meantime will all mayfly please take note and delay their hatch).

Puritanism in sport

Do you remember the England v West Indies test matches during the 1980s? They were colourful, noisy affairs with West Indies fans maintaining a rhythmic cacophony of sound by bashing beer cans together. Indeed it's that same tinny sound that inspires the opening theme of Test Match Special on Radio 4.

But you don't hear it any more. Looking at the back of my ticket for Saturday's play at the first test at Lords I found the answer. There was a clue in the £60 price tag on the front. On the back in small type it says: "Flags, banners, musical instruments, klaxons, rattles, fireworks and fancy dress costumes are not permitted in the ground."

Why stop there? Why not say: no smiling, no telling of jokes, no ribald laughter, no gestures, no whistling, no singing, no dancing in the aisles, no loud conversation, no breaking of wind?

The number of restrictions at Lord's reads like a bad case of old fartism; a little bit hypocritical too since some of the MCC members like nothing better than to put on their egg and bacon striped blazers. How can they of all people complain about fancy dress?

It doesn't seem as if the MCC is in any danger of accommodating the Barmy Army in the near future since there's no place for Billy the Trumpet. The strength of the culture clash can be gauged in the lyrics of the MCC song here, presumably sung to the tune of Alouette.

Working from home, or not

An organisation called Work Wise is telling me that it is National Work From Home Day today (note all those capital letters trying to make it something important and official). So why is this making me feel hacked off?

I work from home every day. Or not. Yesterday I went fishing, today I might get to the gym and I need to mow the lawn. Mowing the lawn is the nearest I can get to what remains the prevailing definition of work, i.e. something you would rather not be doing. Yet even that is satisfying when you stand back and look at the difference you have made to the garden in such a short time.

I might even go fishing again but, since I will probably write about my fishing trip and get paid for doing so, will that be work? This work thing follows me around. At least blogging here I'm safe. I don't get paid to do this. So I am not yet working from home.

The moment I do start working I'm going to be irritated that I'm doing something that someone somewhere has said that I should be doing today just to make some kind of a point. So I'm off to the gym which is worse than work.

Another thing, while mowing the lawn just now I did a lot of thinking and working things through in my head about things that can be classed as work: columns, features etc. On reflection this might count as work . Damn it.


NB. As it turned out I got a lot done today: mowed the lawn this morning, wrote one and a half columns, dealt with some calls and emails, went to the gym, walked the dog, played three sets of tennis with George (beat him) and yes, now am completely but pleasantly knackered. But that's not work. It's living.

Sounds and sweet airs

We spent the morning at the Purcell School of music watching Sir Simon Rattle produce the most magnificent performance of the 3rd and 4th movements of Brahms Second Symphony from the senior orchestra, none of whom is aged over 18.

Before the performance we sat through an hour's rehearsal. If only every workforce had the benefit of the boss's undivided attention, explaining to each and every member what is expected of them and how to get the most out of their work.

More often the chairman is busy speaking to analysts or trying to flog the company, caring little about its products or services or the people who do the work. Asked to identify with their staff, a lot of them would be hard put to speak the same language.

But Rattle was different, working with this talented group of players, and concentrating more on interpretation than on technical issues. It's difficult for orchestra members to strike the right balance between the technical requirements of the music, their individual contributions to the overall sound, and the passion that must be invested to ensure that the composition is delivered with feeling.

Sir Simon quoted Brahms who once advised his own students to practice "one hour a day less and read one more good book."

"You must make your own stories and tell your own stories so you don't get in to the idea that music is something you do as a profession. The moment we think it's a profession we're lost," said Rattle.

Here was an artist painting music with people. In a typical interruption he told the orchestra: "I don't get the feeling that means anything apart from a crochet and F-sharp major. You have to make it mean something." And, you know, they did.

When it came to performing the piece just a quarter of an hour after the rehearsal, the difference was astonishing - measured yet vibrant. It wasn't a group of kids performing out there but a finely tuned and practised orchestra.

Ten minutes later, performance over, they were teenagers again, milling around the school grounds, joshing among themselves. There are some stars of the future in this school, and a few who are stars right now.

The Purcell is one of just four dedicated music secondary schools in England. Children come from all over the world to study here. But music shouldn't be confined to select schools. It should be up there, majoring on the national curriculum. Every child should be learning an instrument from the day they enter education.

Geography, Chemistry, History: why are they more important than music? We struggle in the UK to learn languages but music is international. It speaks to the world.

Reservoir pond, fishing in Epte

If you live in the South East of England and feel at a loose end one weekend you could do far worse than hop on a ferry to France and drive down to Giverny. We did just that last weekend and had a great time.

You know how sometimes you just drop lucky with a place to stay? Well Gill booked a Bed & Breakfast that turned out to be quite a classy venue. It's an old hunting lodge just outside Vernon which is no more than a stone's throw away from Giverny.

Run by Helene and Laurent Daguet the Manoir de Notre Dame has been tastefully decorated throughout, pure House & Garden. The airy bedrooms have excellent en-suite showers and great beds, not those lumpy things you used to get in small French hotels. Helene, who speaks perfect English, was a great hostess and made us feel properly at home.

She also gave us the low down on two great eating places: La Gueulardiere, not far from the house, has some magnificent puddings, and the Restaurant Cote Marine a couple of miles up the road in Vernon also has a first rate menu. Prices are not over the top in either restaurant.

So why Giverny? Well the art lovers among you will know that the village was the home of the Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, from 1883 until his death in 1926. This is where he painted hundreds of studies and canvasses of his beloved lily pond.

Today it is open to the public and people flock here, mainly from Paris. Instead of the peace and tranquility that Monet would have known, his Japanese bridge is sagging daily under the weight of hundreds of visitors. It was so busy in the morning we went back just before closing time to get the unauthentically empty photograph you can see above.

I came across a new phenomenon - bridge hogging. Might I be forgiven for creating a scene from Reservoir Dogs in my mind's eye, with bodies blasted in slow motion from the bridge into a lily pond bathed in blood and gore? The things we imagine behind our smiles.

Monet's former studio has been converted in to a shop where you can buy Monet ties, T-shirts, vests, postcards, prints, books, scarves, jig-saws, cuff-links, watches, mugs, money boxes (Monet boxes?), fridge magnets, teddies, paperweights and seeded pot plants (presumably so you can grow your own Monet). I looked in vain for a Monet snowstorm.

Giverny is twee with some old houses, a hotel where Cezanne once stayed, and what looks like a medieval bus shelter. In the churchyard is Monet's tomb. Nearby is another grave topped by a Union Jack that contains the remains of the seven crew members of a Lancaster bomber that crashed near the village in 1944.

In the afternoon I took my fly rod and had a cast or two in the river Epte that Monet diverted to fill his pond. Apart from some tiny chub I couldn't entice anything substantial to the fly.

Wandering around Monet's house I took a photograph of his Japanese prints to audible gasps and tutting from the French people around me. No photography allowed apparently. Obviously they were unaware of the carnage at the bridge. Cue an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson recreating a scene from the Shining: "Heeeere's Johnny!" There is blood everywhere. But I digress.

It was my old art teacher, Bob Donald, who taught me to appreciate paintings and the history of art. He could have had us drawing and painting every lesson but he liked nothing better than to get out his projector and slides of various art works taking us through the history of art from cave painting to the present.

Of all the things I learned in school, his lessons probably had the most lasting impact. So the chance to see the very place that Monet worked on some of his greatest paintings was a treat indeed. Forget the other visitors (or Tarantino them). Giverny is a wonderful place.

More pics from the weekend, including the lily pond, here.

Thiepval Monument and the Somme

Returning from a weekend in Normandy we called at the Thiepval monument to the 72,000 British dead who died with no known grave on the Somme in the First World War (1914-18).

Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it towers over the battlefield and today has an interpretation centre to put the battle in context for new generations of visitors.

The list of names is staggering. Imagine your telephone directory pasted page by page on a wall. I counted three Donkins: a Thomas Donkin from Durham, a Harry Donkin from East Yorkshire, and a Stanley Donkin from Cornwall, none related to me as far as I know.

White feather

Both of my grandfathers were in the artillery. Grandad Donkin did not join the Army until he was conscripted in 1917. I'm quite proud of him for sticking it out when there was tremendous pressure to volunteer. It's probably the reason I exist. Young women would hand white feathers to young men they saw in civilian clothes. I wonder if that ever happened to my grandad? If so, I wonder how he handled it?

At Fricourt we visited one of the perfectly maintained British cemeteries. Almost all those buried there were members of the West Yorkshire Regiment and all were killed on July 1, the first day of the Somme when the British and Commonwealth losses ran to almost 20,000 with another 40,000 wounded. That's a football crowd, gone in a single day.

Mass Graves

There are more than a thousand British WWI graveyards in France but very few German graveyards. No more than a fifth of the German dead are buried there in marked graves. Some were removed after the first war and others after the Second World War when the dead were either repatriated or deposited in mass graves.

When I first went to the Somme nearly 30 years ago there were few visitors. Almost every farm you drove past had its stack of old munitions ploughed up from the fields. Yesterday at the Lochnager site where a large mine was exploded (60,000 pounds of ammonol completely destroyed a German redoubt) there was a young chap selling brass shell casings and old nose cones as mementos. Nearby there is the Old Blighty Cafe.

A good way to visit the Somme is to start from Albert, then head towards Bapaume on the D929 which intersects the battlefield. You can see the ridge line in which the Germans had dug their trenches, supported by deep underground shelters that enabled enough of their troops to survive an otherwise devastating bombardment.

Withering fire

Once the shelling had finished, whistles blew and the British troops, many from the same streets and villages, climbed their ladders and set out across no-mans land. Meanwhile the German defenders were rushing up from their bunkers to reach their firing positions from where they were able to rake the khaki lines of slowly advancing troops with withering fire.

One of them was the father of an old friend of mine, the late Godfrey Golzen. As a machine gunner, Godfrey's father must have mown down hundreds of the advancing British. Later he would lose an arm before returning to his home town of Berlin at the end of the war.

Holocaust survivor

Mr Golzen senior was a well respected Justice of the Peace who lived peacefully in Berlin with his family, including Godfrey, throughout the Second World War. What makes this remarkable is that he was a Jew, one of about 200 in Berlin who avoided transportation and survived the Holocaust.

Godfrey explained that his family were assimilated and felt as German as any other Berliner. Not that that would have made any difference to the Nazis; but his neighbours and friends stayed loyal throughout the war. Another thing worth noting is his family's attitude to Eastern European Jews. "They weren't liked by those who had assimilated as we had done," said Godfrey.

Footpath idea

The WWI sites are so important to Europe's heritage that they should be made more accessible. I would like to see a Front line footpath that follows the trench system at a certain date - say the morning of July 1 1916 - from it's beginning on the coast to the border with Switzerland.

Very little of the trench system has been preserved but a modern footpath would enable visitors to appreciate the enormity of this terrible war in a way that differs from simply turning up to a site in the car and reading a plaque. The access would need to be purchased but that should be possible. The farmers get enough as it is in EU subsidies. Why not attach a few conditions for those whose farms cross the battlefields?

Postcript: Since writing this I have been contacted by Thomas Golzen, Godfrey's son, who points out some innacuracies. I could edit them in the text but prefer to publish his note instead because it shows how stories can get mangled even given the best intentions of the author. But I also think it gives a different perspective on events where certain stereotypes have emerged. I wonder what the Nazi hierarchy would or could have said to the Jewish German highly decorated war hero?

Here is Thomas's note:

I can see from your blog that you knew my dad, Godfrey, and that you seem to have heard some family history. It's very strange for me to think that I'm only a generation or two away from all that. Actually, it was my gandmother's sister Susi who survived the war in Berlin as a Jew. My dad's family (father, mother and younger sister) managed to escape to Switzerland in 1939 and made their way to the UK from there. I also seem to remember being told that my grandfather had been mostly up against the French during the Somme. His recollection of the first day was climbing out of the dugouts after a week's bombardment with their machine guns and shooting all the attacking troops.

I never met him - he died before I was born - but I got the impression that he rather enjoyed the war. As a Jew, it gave him the chance to be treated on an equal footing with ethnic Germans, and to show them that Jews could be good soldiers too. He was highly decorated before he was invalided out.

Cookie King

George is our youngest son. He doesn't excel much at sport but he's a good boy. A parent couldn't ask for any better. He's a bright kid and popular in school but he sometimes loses marks because his writing is not so neat. He's something of a non-conformist and that can jar with teachers.

The more I look at George, the more I see myself. He's a fully paid up contrary'un as we say in Yorkshire. But I'm sure that what he doesn't get in UCCA points he will more than make up for in pure chutzpah.

George has a certain entrepreneurial spark that I can't recognise in any other member of the family, me included. He understands things about business beyond his years.

A little while back he began selling cookies at school. He would buy a few packs from the local Tesco, split them up and sell the biscuits separately. This way he was clearing about £7.50 a day profit for about 10 minutes work.

He knew just where to stand near the lockers, knew what his customers wanted and priced his product at a nice round figure. He didn't sell too many and never had any left over, thus ensuring that demand always outstripped supply. He could teach some of those dummies on Alan Sugar's The Apprentice a thing or two.

George doesn't get much spending money compared with many of the other kids in his school so he was saving what he made in order to buy a big ticket item such as computer game - the sort of thing he rarely gets from his parents.

I suppose he was taking advantage of the Jamie Oliver effect where schools have been persuaded to adopt healthier diets, leaving scope for opportunists to cash in on a persistent teenage weakness for biscuits.

It was too good to last. A teacher got wind of his business and George's biscuit trade has been knocked on the head. That's the trouble with our schools. They neither know nor care about entrepreneurship.

A good teacher might have taken him in hand, might have tried to get a cut for the school or suggested ways in which he could have modified his selling towards healthier lifestyles. But they don't do A-levels in selling. If they did George would be up for an A*.

I asked him how he felt and he seemed quite relaxed about it. “I'll leave it a while until things have quietened down then start again,” he says. That's ma boy.

Tits exposed

Imagine you have just sat down for lunch with your young family when suddenly the jaws of a T-Rex come smashing through the window trying to chomp off the baby's head.

Looking out on the garden just now I saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker swoop in to view. It's not every day I see a Great Spotted Woodpecker so it caused a fleeting frisson of excitement when I registered the red markings on the back of its head and underbelly.

The euphoria lasted no more than a second or two before I saw the woodpecker settle on a small bird box where, moments before, I had been watching the urgent comings and goings of a pair of Blue Tits rearing their young inside.

The woodpecker (note paragraph 11 here) stuck its beak straight in to the hole. It's amazing the carnage you can witness in your garden at this time of the year, and it all happens so fast. I rapped on the window and the woodpecker flew off. But it's sure to be back. The horror. The horror.

101 uses for an old spinnaker

Another Antiguan night, another party. This one is at the Nicholson's, the family that established yacht chartering in the Caribbean. I'm chatting with Marie Colvin, a veteran foreign correspondent at the Sunday Times. She loves sailing. We have plenty of people in common and worked on the same stories a long time ago, but I don't think we have met before.

She's wearing a bikini and, like some of the other girls who have been crewing alongside her this week, she has a sarong fashioned from strips of day-glow red spinnaker that was ripped apart in a race the previous day. Not Versace, but think Versace prices then add a bit. Spinnaker fashion could catch on. A Frenchman is wearing a spinnaker thong. Nothing else. He's not part of the crew but wants to fit in.

Marie wears a black eye patch these days, pirate style. Someone suggests it's part of the costume. "An RPG took my eye out in Sri Lanka, left some shrapnel in my brain," she says. Now that's a line you don't hear every day over cocktails. The party goer nods vaguely. Whoosh. Her remark has gone completely over his head.

I like Marie. She has guts - an old school war reporter, who tells the story how it is, where it is. This is how she got the wound. I know she would rather it never happened but the patch seems part of her and she can wear it with pride. They don't give journalists medals for reporting from the front line. Just scars.

Everything ends in the Pindar pool next door. But wasn't that the other night too? There's a bright Caribbean moon and the water is baby bath cool. I'd warn trousers, shoes, socks even, to be proper. But a pool is a pool and there's more rum and coke. I'm back early at 3am, up again at 7am staring in the mirror at panda eyes and a tongue that looks in need of a shave. My liver is demanding recognition for all his work. He's called Sarson's.

Fish out of water

I would be knocking on the door of Eric Clapton's rehab clinic if I had the energy to get there. The discos go on quite late here in Antigua, except they don't call them discos anymore and people don't dance to records. Whatever happened to Status Quo?

There's a party at Andrew Pindar's place and someone gets chucked in the pool. That should have been the end of a pleasant evening but I'm persuaded to call at a club on the way back to the hotel. Bad move.

The day had started well. The local distillery boss, Anthony Bento, is kind enough to drive me around the island and we have a tasting of his English Harbour Rum. He says it is a "sipping rum". Too late. I gulped. We spend an absorbing couple of hours chatting with a local historian, Paddy Simon, who runs a lawn-mower repair shop. Paddy has some fascinating insights in to the slave trade that once held the island in its grip. I think they're worth a blog or a column to themselves.

But that meeting seems a long time in the past as I crawl in to bed at about 5am. The phone goes at 6am. I don't answer it. Then, at about seven, what sounds like a very loud vacuum cleaner starts up. I totter out of bed, grab my fishing gear and find a cab. Someone has told me about a promising flats-wading spot that might hold bonefish.

We find what looks like the spot. It has flats grass that bonefish like to roam. I spend about two fruitless hours wading about a mile and see some baby barracuda and catch a couple of small yellow-finned fish. But I don't see any bones. They will be here but the spot looks quite tidal and I think it needs more water to bring them in.

The taxi driver is puzzled about this fishing. "What do you do with these bonefish when you catch them?" he asks.

"I put them back."

"Oh."

It's pretty clear he thinks I'm a nutter and, yes, I know he's not alone.

Unfortunately I can't spend the day here because I have promised to join a big game fishing trip in the afternoon. I didn't expect much and it didn't deliver much - a smallish barracuda and a dorado (called mahi mahi here) from four hours of fishing. The sea is pretty rough and I feel sick.

There's another party tonight. I bet old Eric's place is busy.

Swanning off

Sailing invitations come along like London buses - nothing for a while, then two or three all at once. I just had a text message with an invitation to join a Swan 47 in a cross-channel race at the weekend. Since I'm not back from Antigua until Friday and since I wouldn't get back from the channel race until Monday I could foresee various problems:

Jet lag (chronic), marriage (out-the-window), work (impossible). Still, it's not every day you get the chance to sail on a Swan, unless you own one. I hate to say "no" but there we are.

Two days sailing on Artemis, an Open 60 boat, have completed a circumnavigation of the island. It all looked the same from the sea. So today I'm going to explore the interior and plan to meet a distillery owner.

Eric Clapton has a home here. He's also set up a rehabilitation centre that's free for the locals who can't afford this kind of treatment but not free for the likes of Britney Spears who was here a few weeks ago before she checked out, then shaved her head.

Apparently there is a little road by the side of the centre that leads down to the sea where there are the sort of sand flats beloved of bone fish. I might try to get down there with my fly rod. But, as I said, you can't do everything.