Is this finally Trump’s Nixon moment and the smoking gun?

Surely the Bolton book revelation is the ball that knocked his middle stump for six? I’ll be damned if he is not out with this one.

Sorry about the cricket analogies, but I’m rather partial to following the old game these days. Been listening to the South African Test. It’s just a shame they cut the Johnathan Agnew commentary from the coverage.

Because that man is sublime. The most wonderful and delightful sports presenter out there. His sonorous tones are a Cotswold landscape on a spring day. He is sprung rhythm, fresh, endearing, humble and kind. He is wise and insightful and clear minded.

I’d chuck him in the Commons any day. Imagine someone like Aggers in there? What a blessing and a relief to us all it would be.

He is the antithesis of that ghastly bloke across the pond. That irksome, slippery, floppy, smug, loathsome, ghastly bag of tricks of a human being at the centre of the circus that is American politics.

But enough of that. For as Rabbie says:

‘Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a’that,

That Sense and Worth o’er the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ ‘that’

Apart from these thoughts nothing much is afoot. The students are back and I take it the in-word at the moment is ‘literally’?

Because I can’t walk past a group of them without hearing one using it and with such emphasis. Well I suppose it’s better than ‘sweet’ or ‘grizly’ or ‘honestly’.

Anyway, ‘minerality’ is the big word in wine at the moment, by all accounts. Except no one can really explain what they mean by it. They got a bunch ( forgive me) of wine buffs together including that Oz Clarke chap, but they were at a complete loss to agree on it. Someone said it was just a metaphor.

He listen guys, I’m at pains already to get any of the subtleties of a wine masters’ description without you guys beginning to throw in metaphors too!

Elsewhere in the world our restaurant is going through a personality crisis. There are many things on the table at the moment, it’s just a pity none of them is food.

Unfortunately we are still closed.

We should resolve matters in the next week.

But don’t hold your breath.

Ok I’ll admit that there are a few hings that annoy me. Fund Managers exorbitant charging rates, Town Council Planning Committees, Meghan Sparkle, modern cricket gamesmanship, the ‘professional’ football foul, smoking, tasting menus, Iranian international diplomacy, Boris Johnson, Ben Stokes, Chris Evans, Matt Wallace and that Guiliani chappy.

I see in the US now that over half the money in equities is in tracker funds. Doesn’t that quite smack in the face and rather undermine the principle of the whole sector? Yes. Seemingly some journalist chap threw darts, when blindfolded, at the stocks list and they outperformed more than half the funds advised by Hargreaves Lansdowne, that large and respected investment platform.

My money is staying on the horses.

Now, in my day cricket was a gentlemanly game played with smiles and decorum and all that. But now there is a lot of back chat out on the field. It was discussed at the last Test Match and some buffoon commentator tried to justify it on the basis that he thought it was integral to the competitive spirit.

Lordy me. Can’t you have a competitive spirit without goading the opposing captain for being gay?

Again. Lordy me.

The ‘professional” football foul is one of the main reasons I don’t like footy. That and it nearly always being 90 minutes of tedium. At least rugby is only 80 minutes and you get lots of breaks when they haves scrums.

And that’s another thing I should have added. The scrum put-in must be the laughing stock of the century. And what about the poor wee hooker? He’ s now basically redundant and just spends half the game sandwiched between 14 sweaty bruisers collapsing upon him in most instances. Who’d be a hooker?

Now, this tasting menu fad is getting a bit out of hand. As that food journalist Raynor said rather aptly at the weekend ‘tasting menus are like double maths, something you have to endure and pay for after’.

Yes last time I think I paid £80 a head, without wine and remember being decidedly hungry after.

But it’s a very hard game this restaurant business as I’ve found out. I now fully get John Cleese in Fawlty Towers.

And of course, the funniest sketch ever in screen comedy ‘ my dear, what do you expect to see out of a Torquay bedroom window? …. giant roving wilderbeasts, the hanging gardens of Babylon?’

Now that is funny.

Bill Bryson and Frank Skinner take note.