Three Steps to Heaven

I’m lucky, I have everything I need or want … until I get something brilliant I didn’t know I needed.

A thoughtful friend has weaned me back onto alcoholic gin by bringing me a present from a store in Manhattan: a Tovolo, silicone, King Cube, ice tray. The cubes are two inches, almost big enough for a polar bear to sit on.

Short digression; Fox’s Glacier Mints were part of my childhood as my grandmother always had a supply. It only occurs to me now they took away the smell of Sweet Afton cigarettes with which she was likewise well provisioned.

Now I must issue a public health warning: drink responsibly. A King Cube melts slower and keeps drinks cool longer than a conventional lump but there’s a limit as to how long I can make a G&T last and, even if the ingredients were room temperature at inception, there is a lot of ice left after draining the glass. It seems a pity to waste it so I usually have another to use it up.

Children here are going back to school but term-time may be germ-time and it has been mooted classes should take place outdoors. As a scion of an old Catholic family I think it would be a salutary experience for Protestant children, indeed those of any faith or no faith, to get an idea how Catholic children were educated in Ireland from 1641 until Catholic Emancipation. Hedge schools were illegal and the school masters may not have been of the highest calibre but the pupils benefitted from plenty of fresh, Irish air and a good splash of rain no doubt.

The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson) equivocates, something he’s good at. It beats me how many senior politicians are unable to be on any leg but the back foot. When repeatedly asked on the Today programme he refused to commit to schools having classes in the open air. He was educated, if it’s possible there, at the University of Bradford established in 1966, where he was protected from the elements by plate glass. Oh now I remember – he got his job from the Prime Minister, another over promoted politician, who should have stuck to journalism. Not least the latter pays better for someone with such a complex private life.