Much has been happening. The biggest news is that we can confirm, Lesley Joseph of Birds of a Feather fame and much else besides will be hosting our Breath Of Fresh Air Evening on Sunday 15th June at Hall Barn, Beaconsfield. So please buy tickets, lots of them. The price is £10 each and the proceeds got to the Wexham Park Ventilator Fund. We will have a fabulous show with music from a Little Night Music, hilarious sketches, evocative readings and poetry and a number of stars who have yet to be named. The wonderful Sarah Kestleman will also be reading a piece.

It promises to be a great evening and you can book tickets on 08700 667720.

More news. I am now published and have a “What Is ?” column in Traditional Boats and Tall Ships magazine. So if you want to find out the derivation of The Knot, how to calculate True Wind Speed and Angle from Apparent, why Weather Helm is better than Lee Helm, what a Chum is or Baggywrinkle, look no further than “What Is ?” in TBTS.

My assault on the Nationals, Regionals and Magazines is also underway with the most devilish clever promotional device to get noticed. Somehow, some way I will get my next career as a columnist off the ground. Stand by for rejection letters, or worse still the deafening sound of silence !

Apropos of that I saw two articles in this morning's rag. One concerned a girl who had started drinking at 12 and by the age of 14 had very serious liver damage, according to the doctors, and now at 18 will die if she touches another drop of alcohol.

And the other story showed some dramatic shots of a man taking a photo of the sunset in the Grand Canyon, perched precariously on top of an isolated rock and further shots of his leap back to the safety of land apparently over a 1,000 foot drop.

To which I have these comments;

A fourteen year old drinks 6 bottles of wine and a litre of vodka a day ? And it's paid for out of her dinner money ? Where did her parents think she was lunching, The Ivy ? How ridiculous. Either someone is telling porkies or someone is telling porkies. Even at the height of his drinking Gerard Depardieu was claimed to be getting through only 4 bottles of wine a day and he is a fairly substantial chap. What did this girl's parents think when she returned home stinking to high heaven of booze, slurring her speech and collapsing all over the place ? Not to mention the vomitting. “Hard day at school dear, never mind”. Some people get what they deserve, parents, child and all. Ludicrous..

A man is seen sitting atop a rock sticking out above the Grand Canyon. Camera on tripod he is drinking his way through a six pack of beer waiting for the sun to set. He is after a good sunset shot. Tourists nearby see him and take photographs of this strange site. The sun sets, the shot is taken and with his gear under his arm and his rubbish, for he is no litterer, he makes the 8 foot leap back to the safety of the edge of the canyon. The tourists notice he is wearing flip flops. A Dutchman takes some shots of this foolhardy act. This much we are told by the paper and we think, “what an idiot”. However, a quick whizz round the internet establishes that the shot of this man was taken by a professional Dutch photographer called Hans Van Der Horst who has as you would expect has a fabulous website of stunnning pictures. And in fact just out of shot was a ledge so that if the man had slipped he would have only fallen a few feet to safety and not the 1,000's of feet to the canyon floor that we are led to believe. So the picture is not what it seems. Omelettes sur le visage all round then at the Daily Mail and P45's for the research department, I wouldn't wonder.

Duncan