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‘This is the one I was thinking of for you,’ said the lady I might feasibly call my mother-in-law, in spirit at least. We were standing in her stable yard in a dingley dell corner of the south of England which is frozen in time. After driving down a winding track between well-tended paddocks, we found her as we always do, dressed in western-style clothing, tending to her animals in her own little world, far from the madding crowd. The builder boyfriend’s long-lost mother is a consummate horsewoman. I say long-lost because she ran away when he was a boy, leaving him with his father who brought him up alone.

I was on the back seat of a golf buggy being driven down to the marina from my beachside villa through grossly exotic tropical gardens. From the many seaside and sporting activities the resort had to offer, I had opted this morning for the ‘island adventure’. I would be whisked away by speedboat and deposited on a desert island to snorkel or relax, then picked up again two hours later. Driving the buggy was a tanned, virile-looking young man with short hair. Smoking wasn’t allowed on the island, and I was dying for a fag. Sticking to my theory that people with short hair must always be told the truth,

If this is the start of the third world war, as some quivering liberal commentators seem to believe, then my suspicion is that it will be over quite quickly, such is the majestic impotence of our opponents. I realise it is unwise to underestimate one’s enemy, but come on. In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, a couple of cheap rockets were lobbed in the direction of the US embassy in Baghdad — they missed, succeeding only in causing a handful of casualties including, presumably, similarly foam-flecked anti-American residents, i.e. people on their own side. A day or two later at least 50 people

‘I used to go to India for a few months every year. A couple of times we even drove there. You could in those days. One year I went to Benares. I rented a place for next to nothing and stayed about three months. Back then there were a lot of hippies in India. They’d run out of money and you’d see them begging. In Benares the hippies all hung out in the same places but I was staying in another part of the city. I think I paid something like three quid a month for my place, which I shared with two other Indian guys.’ I’d brought a bottle

‘Oh, it’s you!’ said the builder boyfriend to the Tory MP in his shooting jacket, as he made his way down the street handing out leaflets. The BB was standing outside his builder’s yard in suburban south-west London where he enjoys a good argument at election time. During the referendum campaign, he fixed a placard to his roof declaring his support for Brexit. When the London lefties walked past visibly struggling with their gag reflex, he disgusted them further by bidding them good morning in a cheerful, courteous tone. If they did stop to argue, they would soon regret it, as the BB is not to be argued with. He

Staraya Russa. About two thirds of the way from Moscow to St Petersburg, in the historic Novgorod Oblast, once the eastern outpost of that much preferable European union, the Hanseatic League. Beautiful cathedral square, lakes and forests, timber-clad museum where Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov. There’s a rather grand house for sale — about 5,000 sq ft, five beds, nice garden — for £143,416. From where I’m sitting, as terrified Tories insist the polls are narrowing and Magic Grandpa is within inches of winning, you’d be mad not to. From where you’re sitting, too, a little later in this awful week, if the Tories were right to be terrified. Staraya