Is the UK second-tier to the US?

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender, told an audience in the US this week that he didn't want America to become a second tier nation like the UK.

I think we can assume from this that he believes that the US is first tier and the UK second rate. He singled out our National Health Service. At least the UK has a health service that cares for everyone, rich and poor and doesn't expect its citizens to pay through the nose for Medicare.

So where is the UK second tier to the US?

Is it second tier in geography?

Is it second tier in good manners and politeness?

Is it second tier in history, tradition, rugby, motor sport, government, language,the military, empire building?

Just what is it that's second tier about the UK Mr Romney? We're not as fat as Americans, that's true. We haven't been to the moon and we don't have anything quite like Hollywood. But we do have class, a kind of class that you can't buy with dollars. And that means we shall never be able to match our American cousins in this sort of thing. Well you can't have everything.

The problem with Americans is that they simply do not understand us. As the American poet, Randall Jarrell, once wrote: "To Americans English Manners are far more frightening than none at all."

Death of a customer

The customer comes first, the customer is king, know your customer, customers matter more than anything: to be in business is to be focused almost manically on customers and customer service. As Gordon Selfridge put it: "The customer is always right."

What a load of baloney. I hate customers. They are horrible people; not remote either; they are you and me; and the problem is that you and me have become very badly behaved over the years.

We take six outfits to a dressing room where we discard them for members of staff to put back on the rails. We go in to a shop and make some outrageous demand for some service then complain when we're told we have to pay for it. We knock things off shelves and don't pick them up. We finger vegetables and put them back.

We thumb through books but never buy the book that's been thumbed through. We mix up CDs in record shops that other staff must then sort out. We stand at counters and speak in to our mobile phones while people are serving us. We can't be bothered to find the right change even if we have it in our pockets.

But sometimes we can be much much worse. We damage things through misuse then expect the item to be replaced. We ask for discount routinely that simply leads retailers to put up their prices by 20 per cent.

Going the extra mile

So who loses out from all this bad behaviour? Ultimately we do. We get poor service from shop assistants who have had their fill of rude and ignorant customers, who are fed up of "going the extra mile" for employers who don't pay them for working an extra 10 minutes or spending part of their lunch break attending to a customer enquiry.

Good manners

Something else is lost too and that's everything to do with basic good manners. How can we put things right? Well we shouldn't wait for the retailers. The first thing that we, the customers, should get straight is that, however much the shopkeeper insists that our satisfaction is paramount, that should not be interpreted as a licence for boorish behaviour.

We can be pleasant with shop staff, even when they are surly; we can pick things up off the floor that others have knocked down. We can shop around rather than ask for discount; we can appreciate that customer service adds value to a product - a shop assistant's time is money; and we can look after products on the shelves as if we owned them ourselves. Damaged goods add to overhead and we pay for that overhead.

Need for respect

Underpinning this is a need for greater respect in all walks of life. Let's start in the shops.

As Arthur Miller once wrote in Death of a Salesman: Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

Trick or Treat

Trick or treat? Not much of an option is it? When I was a kid there was no such thing. We used to make turnip lanterns for Halloween and that was about it.

Pumpkins were not something you ever saw on Dewsbury market so we had to settle for what we called turnips but that were actually swedes. I remember my cub scout pack had a turnip lantern competition. My mum didn't believe in wasting money so she got me what must have been the smallest turnip on the market, about the size of a grapefruit.

I scooped it out, made the face and she gave me a night light - not a full blooded candle, note - so that when Arkayla (the cub leader)turned off the lights there was a long row of glowing goulish, grinning faces with my tiny creation at the end, struggling to raise so much as a flicker. It wouldn't have frightened a mouse. Still I was pleased with it.

The nearest thing we had to Trick or Treat, I suppose, was Mischief Night on November Fourth. That was pure tricks. The nearest you came to a treat was a thick ear from anyone who caught you. The idea that we would have dared knock on doors demanding sweets with menaces was proposterous. We would have been skinned alive in my neighbourhood.

Now we have this US import that gained in popularity I recall after the success of Stephen Spielberg's ET. This BBC writer likens it to Japanese knotweed.

I have no issue with the little tots who dress up and come door to door with their mothers. It's when you get teenagers romping around that really annoys me. There's a group of them who sometimes come in to our neighbourhood. A few weeks ago I was asked by a frightened neighbour to go sort them out.

They weren't doing much harm apart from hanging about - somewhat in the manner of the hoodies in that film Hot Fuzz if you happen to have seen it. If you haven't seen it, I should point out that hoodies are regarded as a menace by the local community whose members, it turns out, are a far uglier bunch of characters.

I noticed a plastic bottle with a hole in it at the feet of one of them and picked it up. "Oi that's my bong," he said, snatching it from me. A bong is a device for smoking dope that works in the same way as a Turkish bubble pipe. Both he and I knew the real value of this item: evidence.

I was glad to have been with another neighbour during this confrontation. We told them to clear off. OK, they are no more than a nuisance but you can see how things might escalate, particularly if they turn up on a night like tonight. I have no wish to be fingered as the neighbourhood bouncer, either by hoodies or by my timid neighbours.

You can keep Trick or Treat. It's a pale shadow of Bonfire Night as I used to know it, when you could choose your own fireworks singly, when there were pie and peas and soups and where there was a bonfire you had built yourself after collecting all the wood in your half-term break. We called it "chumping" round our way but there were many local variations for the word.

I suggested a bonfire to my neighbours - we have plenty of communal land - but they were worried about personal injury claims and liability insurance. It's pathetic. An element of risk and danger is part and parcel of what it is to be human. We're losing the art of living.

The man who gave us Concord

There was an impressive birthday bash in London this week for Haymarket Publishing, the magazine stable established and chaired by Michael Heseltine, the former minister and doyen of past Conservative Party conferences.

The 800-strong guest list - apart from your’s truly, included presumably as a columnist for one of the Haymarket magazines - read like a Who’s Who of the establishment from the 1960s and 1970s. The place was full of Tory grandees from the Thatcher years.

In addition to Hezza there was John Major (Mazza), Lord Carrington (Cazza), Michael Howard (Hozza) and Tom King (Kizza). Francis Pym was too ill to be there. So Pizza was off.

Lady Thatcher herself was absent, which was not a surprise. I don’t know whether or not she had an invitation.

Among the sea of grey hair there was David Frost, Michael Parkinson, Jeremy Isaacs, Stirling Moss, even Mary Quant whose hair, as you might expect, is not grey. I'm surprised that Quant, once described by Bernard Levin as the "high priestess of sixties fashion," is still awaiting a damehood.

Hezza gave an excellent speech with some good jokes. He reminded the audience that the political journalist Tony Howard, used to refer to his old employer as “the slave market press.”

There was also a reference to Heseltine’s prodigious spending while in government, since he was responsible for promoting Concord, The Channel Tunnel, the third London airport and the Millennium Dome. “I want to thank you,” he said. “I always believed that I could spend it faster than you could earn it.”

Parky did a brief session but the star turn, saved for after the pudding course, was Shirley Bassey whose voice has lost none of its power with advancing years. She did a great little cabaret including all the old favourites such as Goldfinger, Something and Hey Big Spender aimed specially at the host.

All in all it was a good do. To take home we were all given a goody bag with chocolates wrapped in tiny Haymarket magazine covers. One thing that struck me was how well everyone looked. The 60s generation was clearly made of durable stuff. The only thing missing, although not missed by me, were the cigars.

Moses train in Bangkok market

Moses train? Well what else can you call it? Why can't they do this at Waterloo?

BlackBerry v Facebook

Which of the above is the best technology? Facebook gets my vote and not simply because it’s free.

I worry about BlackBerries and other BlackBerry-style hand-held devices. I worry about what they are doing to people, destroying the ability to concentrate while creating a world of ever-shortening attention spans.

They increase anxiety as people forever check their emails. They encourage ignorant behaviour when people in meetings devote more of their attention to their BlackBerries than they do to those speaking in the room. They destroy the art of conversation and trample over nuance. They are immune to sensitivity and encourage a Spock-like approach to emotion.

It’s fitting that I should mention the Star Trek character, Mr Spock, since the phrase “beam me up Scotty” which I don’t think was ever actually uttered in the series, but which became, nevertheless, one of the most frequently quoted remarks, heralded the BlackBerry era since it was uttered in to a hand-held device that turned out to be visionary in its conception.

I remember when some newspapers began to issue bleepers to their reporters. I never wanted one. It encouraged control freakery

Some may be attracted to BlackBerry for its convenience and the way it enables people to work any place any time.

But I don’t want to be contactable all the time. Nor do I seek the means to remain in constant contact. As it is there is too much communication via email, a lot of it lazy as people two and fro for message after message making an arrangement which they then change on a whim.

Facebook, on the other hand, is transforming the way we know people, infiltrating social behaviours in to our everyday lives, including our working lives. I’m getting to know more about the personalities of the people I’m dealing with much of the time. You can see the human face behind the business suit.

The horrible Linkedin, on the other hand, is no more than an on-line exchange of business cards. It does not provide the virtual space for human interaction in the way that Facebook does.

The best feature on the whole of Facebook is a little box that says your name and invites you to say something about yourself at any particular moment. So, on my page it says “Richard is….” I look at this quite a lot and ask myself questions: What’s my mood just now? What’s my immediate concern? What am I doing? It’s a little indulgence on a site that invites self-indulgence in an age when we need to be emancipated from the commoditisation of people and work.

Returning to the heading of this blog, it's no contest really: Facebook is a social enabler; the BlackBerry is downright anti-social.

So be my Facebook friend by all means but don’t expect instant responses from a BlackBerry. It ain't going to happen.

The Big Lebowski and Dudeism

Has there ever been a better film than the Big Lebowski? I'm a big fan of the Coen Brothers but as much as I enjoyed Fargo, probably their second best film, I keep on returning to the Big Lebowski.

It's one of those films that grows on you, becoming more enjoyable with repeat screenings. This is one of the classic scenes.

I suppose it's that desire to return to a film, book or show, to become familiar with sections of dialogue while warming to the characters, that helps to create cult status. In the same way people go to repeat performances of the Rocky Horror show when they begin to relate to the characters, although that one didn't work for me.

While not wishing to deny the appeal of The Dude played by Jeff Bridges, my favourite character is Walter Sobchak played by John Goodman.

Some may argue that the script is bordering on the gratuitous. As Sam Elliott says as the stranger, "Do you have to use so many cuss words?" It seems they do.

I realise I have mentioned the Big Lebowski before in this blog but I thought it deserved another airing. I love the soundtrack too.

NB. Thanks to the Big Lebowski I have found religion. Not that I plan to do anything about it. I mean, that's the whole point. If we all became Dudeists and followed Dudesim we'd never get anywhere, never bother anyone, never harm anyone but ourselves, and that might not be a bad thing. Our only concern in life would be a minor commitment to Feng Shui. Everyone needs something to tie a room together.

Engaging behaviour

I've written a column for Thursday's Financial Times looking at employee engagement. It's an odd word, engagement, when used as human resources people use it, to describe discretionary behaviour among employees or what I would call goodwill.

My dictionary doesn't give any such definition. As I said in the column, if you asked most people what it involved to be engaged, they would tell you that it meant either committing yourself to marriage or sitting on the toilet.

The thing is that human resources consultants just can't get enough engagement right now because it's turned out to be a good money earner. Companies all want engaged employers ready, in management parlance, to "run the extra mile."

I haven't seen many postmen running extra miles recently. In fact I have never seen them running. I don't believe that most people get up on a morning thinking "I can't wait to get in to the office so that I can get on with making money for my bosses and the company shareholders."

But a lot of people go to work wanting to give of their best. The problem is that when they get there they are confronted with so many obstacles, often created by unreasonable management demands such as "drop what you're doing and do this," that stress levels begin to increase and people simply become pissed off or what HR people would call "disengaged."

Engagement is not a quality that needs to be created. It's something that's natural, like curiosity in children. But just as school stifles curiosity so the workplace often stifles the goodwill of employees.

The answer is to ensure that people, including managers, know exactly what is expected of them and for the owners and heads of companies to get real about the human capacity for work instead of constantly upping targets and demanding ever greater efficiencies.

No wonder increasing numbers of young people are turning their backs on big company careers opting instead to join start ups or create their own little businesses. Sure, they will miss out on management training but much of this today is about management conformity. There's nothing like learning from your own mistakes. I do all the time.

English sport and the art of coming second

Well bad things did come in threes for English sports fans this week to the combined joy of Russia, South Africa and Finland.

But that's sport for you. The biggest surprise of the three was the way Lewis Hamilton and McLaren blew the Formula One world championship.

These things happen but you wouldn't think so from sports and media commentators who can never resist the temptation to count unhatched chickens.

I suppose it means there's going to be more than the usual gloom and despondency around the water coolers on Monday. But Hamilton will have another chance unlike the great Stirling Moss who never won a world championship in spite of a series of performances in race cars that marked him out as one of the fastest drivers of any generation.

In a way there was some justice served for Ferrari after the shenanigans that went on earlier in the season. South Africa too deserved their win because of their consistency and, as for the England football team - what's new?

Wollemi at Wisley

I couldn't believe the traffic and crowds at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley today. I'd only popped down there for a plant pot but wandered in to find out what all the fuss was about.

The national fruit show had a big marquee in the gardens with tasting stalls. That said, Wisley has become so busy now that any sunny day at a weekend - and today was glorious - is enough to pack the place out.

What a change from 20 years ago when we first joined the society. At that time Sunday was a members' day but today commercialism, greater spending power, and all those TV gardening programmes have made a big difference to demand so the rules have changed, allowing entry for anyone willing to pay the entrance fee.

The gardens have expanded so much and with the new glasshouse they can easily absorb the crowds. But pressure on the car parks has grown and the place has lost its intimacy. Still I enjoy our visits, but today I only wanted a plant pot.

The adjoining garden centre is excellent because of the variety and quality of the plants. I noticed they had some Wollemi pines for sale at just under £100 each. The first time I saw this tree in the botanical gardens in Sydney during the late 1990s the specimen was so rare it was kept behind bars.

That was not long after its discovery in two small stands that are its only known remaining habitat in the wild. Now, however, the tree has been propagated and anyone can have one in the garden.

Beyond the marquees, the cake stalls, the rare plants, the crowds and the car park I managed to find a plant pot. I'm sure life used to be simpler than this.

Meanwhile down at the Red Cow

Down to the Red Cow in Richmond to watch the rugby union World Cup final. The pub was heaving. One thing I thought odd was that people behaved just as they would if they were actually at the match, applauding good passages of play and cat calling the referee when there was disagreement with a decision. Who's going to hear them?

The outcome of the match hinged on one very tight decision over whether or not Mark Cueto's foot touched the line as he went over to ground the ball in the corner after a dazzling run by Mathew Tait.

The match official with the video monitor certainly spent time scrutinising the play before ruling out a try. So we couldn't complain even though it looked good from the angles I saw. And that's one of the things that makes rugby such a great game - so much better than football. The players didn't complain or whinge about the decision after the match; none of the "we wuzz robbed" remarks you get in soccer, simply an acknowledgement that South Africa deserved their win.

But I wouldn't go so far as to say they were the better side on the day. England didn't suffer a beating, they simply didn't get the rub of the green this time. Decisions can make so much difference, as New Zealand found when they lost out to a French try scored from what looked like a clear forward pass.

Consistent rugby

Over the whole tournament, however, South Africa played the most consistent rugby and did so by concentrating on their defence, punishing other sides when they made errors as they did against Argentina in the semi-final.

England succeeded because they went back to basics - to the things they do well - scrummaging, fighting for the ball and protecting it when they get it. In the final they made two costly errors. Jonny Wilkinson should not have passed out to Tait that led to a slip in front of the posts, then a penalty for holding on to the ball. Lewis Moody should not have tripped a South African player that led to another successful penalty.

Big commitment

They also lost the ball in one or two situations when they had South Africa under real pressure. On the other hand they defended well themselves. The great thing about the final, as a rugby fan, is that, as you watched the match you felt that every player on the field was giving their absolute maximum commitment.

So we left the pub disappointed with the result but not by England's performance. I'm happy for the South Africans if the win lifts their country. Their team will be going in to transition in the next few years due to political pressures to field more black players. This may lead to a weaker side in the short term but hopefully will produce long term benefits in building rugby excellence within South Africa's black population.

The danger is that the political ramifications create so much upheaval that it damages the South African game and its administration. Sometimes political correctness can go too far. Talk of removing the Springbok emblem because of a perceived association with apartheid in some quarters seems silly.

Laissez fair management

As for England, there will be transition there too. Some great players are retiring but there is enough experience in this side to be optimistic about the changes. One thing that may need to be addressed is the laissez fair management style of England's head coach Brian Ashton. Was it justified by the results? I'm not so sure. But that shouldn't mean talk of dissmisal. It just needs sorting out.

Another issue for the game's administrators is the success of defensive rugby and territory-grabbing kicking in this World Cup. It didn't make for many great passages of running play in the tighter games. There was plenty of excitement in the tenseness of it all but it meant that we didn't see much flowing rugby in those matches. Overall, however, it was a great tournament, made so, in many ways, by the lesser sides that are improving all the time. It leaves plenty to build on.

A record salmon?

You may or may not have noticed a report in one or two newspapers this week about claims of a record salmon on the River Ness. There has been a lot of debate over the catch on various fly fishing forums but you can see some of the first reports here.

The fish was returned and there are photographs. Although most seem to have been taken off the web since they were posted there, this one can be seen with a report on the Times website. You can imagine that the debate has fallen in to two camps - those who believe (or want to believe) all the quoted measurements and those who are sceptical.

I fall in to the latter camp. First of all there are the pictures. It looks a good sized fish but I would go no further than that.

But some reports have been suggesting it could weigh over 100lbs? Yes, and some people believe they have been abducted by aliens. It gives me no pleasure to be so dismissive but when you look at those initial claimed measurements - length 56 ins, girth 50 ins (although another post puts the girth at 40 ins) - it's difficult not to suspend belief. While there have been a very few fish that have been longer than 56 ins I have never seen a girth measurement approaching anything like that.

Georgina Ballantine's UK record rod caught salmon, landed on the Tay in 1922, was 54 ins long with a girth of 28 and a half inches. The biggest verified girth I have come across is one of almost 34 ins on a 60lbs salmon caught off Sweden by Kenneth Olsson in 1995.

Everything we know about the biggest Atlantic salmon that have been caught by any method in the history of fishing has been put together in a remarkable new book by Fred Buller, The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon. It is remarkable because it has half a lifetime of exhaustive research and photography on Buller's part, a true labour of love.

There have been unverified reports - one just less than a century old - of Atlantic salmon over 100 lbs, but nothing approaching this size has been caught on rod and line and no fish with the girth claimed for the Ness fish has ever been caught according to the records.

Some giants are still being caught on rivers such as the Alta in Norway. But a giant today is 50 lbs. A fish of a lifetime is something in the 40lb class and a very exceptional fish (certainly good enough for my lifetime)is anything upwards of 30 lbs. I have caught three salmon over 20lbs and three at a little under and have lost two in the 30lb class but I'm still waiting for the really big one.

This year on the Dee there were one or two very big ones about. I saw one that must have been approaching 40lbs. But it's easy to get carried away with size, particularly in these days of catch-and-release when we don't always have scales. As for the conversion charts, they are rough guides for those of us who aren't worried about a pound or two either way.

So it's conceivable that a fish could be caught in Scotland today in the 50lb class. But whether this was one, remains to be seen. Perhaps we shall never know. As a fisherman I know how dispiriting it is to be doubted. The angler who caught the Ness fish and his fellow witnesses must be feeling this just now. But they know how big it was and, let's face it, there is nothing that anglers like more, than to talk about big fish - except, perhaps, catching one.

NB. Since writing this I have found this link to a Scotsman article that suggests a size nearer 45lbs, still an exceptional fish but nowhere near the claims made earlier. The report also says that no tape measure was used. As a guide, if you ever catch a big salmon and want to estimate its girth, look at your own first.

A fraud on all our houses

It's good to see this morning that Scotland Yard are considering whether to investigate ITV's telephone call scandal that cheated television viewers out of £8m in worthless phone calls.

Why anyone should phone-in to vote on a TV programme beats me but people do and their calls cost money, some of which - if calls are at premium rates - goes in to the network's coffers.

Now Michael Grade, the ITV chairman says he wants to pay the money back. Any that is not claimed, he says, will go to charity. But theft is theft, no matter how contrite the thief. One problem for the police might be to establish just who has been doing the thieving.

Should the board be blamed for the actions of individual programme makers? The size of the deception would make it big enough for a Serious Fraud Office investigation but that is unlikely.

Treating the matter as fraud, however, seems reasonable because the systematic cheating of viewers in this way should not be put down to oversight. The programme makers knew what they were doing and carried on, like most persistent thieves, because they thought they could get away with it.

In the same way the perpetrators could fool themselves in to thinking that their's was a victimless crime since the victims were willingly throwing their money away in the hope of having some influence in the outcome of a vote. Again this is a classic source of mitigation for their actions in the minds of fraudsters.

Outside the investigation, the answer to this kind of abuse by TV programmers is simply not to pick up the phone. But it seems that many people just can't help themselves. In the old days, when we slotted money in to a coin box we had a sense of paying for something when we made a call.

Today, now that people are billed remotely, the phone-call has become just one more feature of the disposable society and yet another example of eroding values.

Rugby v football

Well it's Thursday and there hasn't been a phone call promising a day to remember at the Rugby Union World Cup final. It's too much to hope. World Cup finals are reserved for A-list clients in corporate entertainment and I doubt if I'm even C-list.

Besides I prefer to watch my rugby with the same lads who have been getting together for Twickenham matches for the past 30 years. The routine is always the same. A few beers before the match, always at the same pub in the same few square feet at one end of the bar, then down to the bus and a sing song on the top deck all the way to the ground. Always the same songs.

When we were in our early twenties we used to look at the "old farts" in their Barbour raincoats and wonder whether we would turn out like that - and we did. But we still have a lot of fun.

The routine changed a bit when they built the new stand and got rid of the old West Stand bar where a chap in a sheepskin coat we used to know as Beastie would climb on to the stanchions and go through his Beastie routine.

I like the home internationals and the odd trip to Ireland or France because its an opportunity for blokes to be blokes, tell a few jokes, have a few debates that never get too serious, drink a bit more than we should and sometimes fall over although there is always a magical homing instinct that somehow transports you back to your doorstep.

One of the lads, Simon, sent over a great link to this rugby inspired piece of viral marketing. It made me laugh anyway. Simon's is the Philanderer blog listed down the side of mine. Rugby tours, golf, tours, what's the difference? As he explains here, some things never change.

I can't see England winning on Saturday but then I couldn't see them beating the Australians or France. I don't think my old ticker can stand another tight match. But another Springbok walk over is also too shameful to contemplate. As Stuart, another rugby mate, said after South Africa's 36-0 beating of England earlier in the tournament, "England were lucky to score nil" on that occasion.

Could England walk over South Africa? I very much doubt it. But we can dream. How about 21-0 to England at half time? Even in that unlikely event I would still be biting my nails with some justification.

I'm not superstitious but some people believe that things go in threes. Suppose the England football team has kicked off a run that includes the loss of the world cup final this weekend and Lewis Hamilton losing out in Brazil? I'm really very very sorry for planting that thought but a worry shared is a worry halved so there you have it. Go England!

Don't be shy, bring out your policies

One good thing that came out of all the recent general election speculation was an attractive Conservative policy on inheritance tax, promising an increase of the existing threshold for to £1m. I thought it was a good idea, particularly the proposal to fund the threshold increase from annual charges levelled on those who opt to live in the UK without paying any income tax like the rest of us.

Taxing inherited wealth does little to encourage savings and, although it still only affects a minority of the population, the threshold really needs to be higher.

Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, is sceptical about the Tory calculations. The Treasury, nevertheless, will be doing its own sums now if it has any sense.

If the proposal stacks up, and if the residence tax could be administered fairly in a way that does not discourage rich foreigners such as Roman Abramovich and Mohamed Al-Fayed to waste their fortunes on overblown department stores and English football teams, I'm all in favour of the Labour Government adopting it at the earliest opportunity.

Sound policies for government should be adopted, no matter where they emerge. Instead of feeling angry at a stolen policy, the Conservatives should take pride in being able to influence the direction of government while out of office.

After all, the national interest in good government should override party concerns as the Conservative leader has pointed out. As a political neutral I hope the idea can be adopted. If the Conservatives have any more good ideas they should share them now so that we can all benefit. Hiding them away for a general election is selfish in the extreme.

Hutch for sale

There was an interesting item on dialects on You and Yours, Radio Four, today. In Devon, I discovered, they have a word - Backsyfore - that people use if their cardigan happens to be on the wrong way round.

I always enjoyed Yorkshire dialect as a child. My maternal grandmother not only used it, she enjoyed reading it whenever there was dialect item in the local newspaper or in the Dalesman.

There have been times when I have inserted dialect words unwittingly in to my newspaper copy wondering why ever the sub editors should question them. A little while back I referred to someone as a contrarian and was flummoxed to find that it was missing from the dictionary. I assume what I thought was a word was no more than the pronunciation of "contrary one" or "contrary 'un" referring to someone who enjoys contradicting people.

Often dialect is no more than a different way of saying a word. In Yorkshire, for example, people hang out the "weshing" instead of washing or laundry.

As children if we were continually running up and down the stairs my mother would tell us that we were "up and darn thrussen" or we would be told that were "in an' out like a dog piddling in snow."

Those, I suppose, were more colloquialisms than dialect. I have no idea where certain sayings came from. If my mother wanted to vent her spleen on someone the most hurtful comment she could muster was: "I hope your rabbit dies and you can't sell its hutch."

Euphemism was popular too. I remember my auntie once telling my mother in hushed tones that a young woman they both knew "fell off a bus." I was concerned for the health of the lady and pestered my auntie to tell me how she was. It turned out the woman had become pregnant "out of wedlock" and was now "living over t'brush," or "living tally" to which a common reply of astonishment might be: "Well I'll go t'bottom of our stairs."

My favourite among all Yorkshire words is "thoil". If you can't thoil something you can't justify its expense. Another favourite is "appen" meaning "maybe".

If you see people walking slowly and seemingly aimlessly in Yorkshire, they're "traipsing" along. I did a lot of "traipsing abart" with friends as a child. Today everything has to be purposeful. I'm thinking I don't traips enough.

Angler's elbow

I'm often asked to recommend fishing gear. A lot depends on your pocket. You don't need to spend a fortune on gear just as you don't need to spend a fortune on a car. But some people do. I'm writing for Financial Times readers who my editorial masters believe have bottomless pockets. It's not true.

The rich don't get rich by spending their money. Some of the wealthiest anglers I know have turned out on the river with some of the scruffiest gear imaginable. But they still catch fish if they know what they're doing.

I try to strike a happy medium, mentioning some of the best gear but also suggesting some ideas for compromise. See what you think. I have just got back from a taimen fishing trip in Mongolia but the appearance of that write-up will have to wait a while since it's scheduled for a future edition of the FT's How To Spend It magazine.

I plan to cover some conservation issues in my next fishing column - from mussels to mink to water cress. The next step, I suppose, is to plan some more fishing trips but just now I'm fished out. I've been suffering from tendinitis in my right elbow, brought on by persistent yanking of a surface lure to attract taimen. Does this qualify as an industrial injury?

If you want to get in to fly fishing or if you are simply in the market for some new gear I'm happy to recommend any of the dealers mentioned at the end of the article. I'm particularly pleased to see a new tackle dealer in London. Grainger's is just outside South Kensington underground station. Expect friendly service if you go there and it's real fishing shop not a fashion shop with tackle at the rear.

Black dog

Do you ever have one of those days when nothing feels right? You feel really down but can't put a finger on the cause. You tick off the important things: relationships, family, friends, health, work, time of life.....

Yes, that's the one - time of life. I turned 50 this year. Fifty is the new 30 they say. Who are they trying to kid? It might be the new 40 but 40 wasn't great either. I want to be 20 again. But what would I change? Would I marry the same? I guess I would except times are different now. It's fashionable to co-habit for a while.

I've been with the same partner for 28 years and it's been good; still is. We have three healthy boys who seem pretty well adjusted from where I'm sitting. As families go we have our ups and downs but nothing too traumatic.

I've had a solid career which still seems remarkably sound even though I left paid employment six years ago. There's been a lot of travel. I miss Yorkshire but we still have many friends there. I can't say I have ever adjusted to living in Surrey - just too many golf clubs.

I should have written more books, should have done some TV and a bit more radio but I'm not very good at striking deals. I don't chase things, don't kick at doors. For a career journalist I'm just not so curious about things as I used to be. I love to chat but I think everybody needs space and journalists can be so "in your face."

Yes today is one of those days that the negativity is flowing from every pore. Think Eeyore. Think Marvin the Paranoid Android (without a brain the size of a planet,of course). Americans can't understand this kind of "can't do" mentality. Even if they feel this way they would never admit it publicly.

Sometimes I wonder if it has something to do with a Yorkshire upbringing in a sooty mill town where even the grass was grey. You must have seen those L S Lowry pictures. Well that was just like my town and I was one of the stick children, head held down. But we were 'appy.

I'm having a full bells and whistles medical examination later this week. I know they're going to find something. Maybe that's at the root of my darkening mood. But there's another more pressing concern, common to hypochondriacs everywhere: suppose they don't find anything? That's the biggest worry of all.

ASBO society

A 10-year-old girl is taken to court and fined for crayoning her initial on a neighbour's wall. The same day a newspaper reports that a boy is charged with grievous bodily harm for flicking a classmate with an elastic band. Whatever happened to a good telling off?

I remember as a child sharing a can of Crazy Foam with a friend. Crazy Foam was just like shaving foam - white foam that quickly evaporated after you had squeezed it out of the can. It was popular for a time in TV "custard pies."

One day we took our can to a car park and squirted dollops of crazy foam over a lot of the windscreens until a policeman appeared, gave us a good ticking off and made us wipe it all away with a cloth.

Today that wouldn't happen because: 1. Policemen rarely walk a beat anymore and 2. if they do they come armed, not with a hard word in the ear but with an ASBO.

The ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order)has become the weapon of choice within the judicial system for dealing with minor misdemeanours. I wouldn't condone crayoning on a wall or flicking a rubber band, no more than I would condone squirting Crazy Foam. But I do think we are losing a sense of proportion in the way we deal with mischief.

Mischief is a symptom of immaturity. It's not big, it's not clever but it's part of growing up and people grow out of it. On Mischief night - the night before bonfire night on November 5th - we used to get up to all kinds of tricks, tying dustbin lids to door handles, putting potatoes in exhaust pipe ends, throwing bangers in to gentlemen's toilets, that kind of thing. It's dying out now as is bonfire night as we adjust to a world of conformity and political correctness.

At least in those days we knew when to draw the line. Playgrounds were armed with spud guns and pea shooters. Today they're armed with knives.

Big TV

Up to last week we got by with a TV set small enough to hide in a cupboard. It was fine except that the advent of widescreen TV had chopped the picture so that if you were watching a film with two people sitting on either side of a table all you could see were their noses.

It was time for a change so I asked our eldest boy, John, to do a bit of market research. Nothing much happened until I had a call last week from John and his mother who had found themselves in the TV shop. There was a TV with money knocked off and it would amply fulfill our needs.

I felt a bit pressured but gave it my seal of approval without really understanding what was meant by a 40-inch screen. There's a big difference between something 17 inches wide that fits in a cupboard and 40 inches which is like the deck of an aircraft carrier.

I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It was a pub TV - the kind of TV screen that follows you all around the house. I don't know whether you have ever seen the Big Lebowski (one of my favourite films, incidentally) but there is a scene early on when the main character, The Dude (played by Jeff Bridges), is irritated because an intruder has urinated on a carpet that he liked because it "tied the room together."

Well I like to think that the furniture we have in our living room kind of ties the room together in normal circumstances. But the big black presence of this new TV screen in the corner of the room just dominated everything. I slept on it but the TV invaded my dreams and I felt no better the next morning. The new TV would have to go.

It was an unpopular decision with the boys but I think its 32-inches-wide replacement is a reasonable compromise, bigger than I would prefer but not so big that it resembles George Orwell's original concept of Big Brother.

This may seem a snobbish observation but I wonder if there is a class element in TV choice? I associate very large TVs with a certain kind of brashness, advertising where your priorities lie. I like my TVs to be small, understated and off-centre. It's as if I'm making a statement that the TV is not an important part of my life.

I'm thinking, however, that this is something of a Pooterish attitude. My kids tell me that young people all like big TV screens and that I am out of touch. Our youngest son, George, is particularly irked that we paid an extra £50 for the smaller TV (that was not a sale bargain). "How could anyone pay £50 more for a smaller TV?" he says.

Yet it's not small. The TV is out of the cupboard, demanding to be watched. We are big TV people now and that makes me uncomfortable.