Here I am, back from my break. Mental health never better, I feel like a totally new aardvark. Full of health and sniffing round for ants. Well, its a cure of sorts, nothing’s perfect. Not even the three-headed angel which has followed me since my cure.

And the Olympics rolls on even without Simone Biles and now, tragically, without Dina Asher-Smith too. And much as I admire Simone as the veritable ‘giant’ she is, at about 4 foot 8, I truly adore Dina. She is our national captain. Our poster girl. She is the most bright, vibrant, energetic woman. She is eloquent, unpretentious and delightful. In short (and she is, too) I love her. But she has been harbouring a secret hamstring issue for 5 weeks. She didn’t want to upset everyone. Didn’t want to ‘let anybody down’. She told the BBC yesterday after she let everybody down by coming 4th (sheer class) in her 100 metre heat. And then she started crying and I did too. It was emotional. Her shattered dreams become our shared upset. We still love her.

And then some interesting words from Jeremy Clarkson this morning. Mainly because they were about cars. When he ventures to other subjects I’m less inclined to agree. He test drove a hydrogen car. Which have actually been around for years but the problem is buying hydrogen to fill them up. There are about 4 places in the country where you can do this, so if you don’t live fairly near them, getting a hydrogen powered car is pretty much buying a sculpture. And no-one likes production-line, Japanese-manufactured artwork on their driveway. Yet the advantages of buying hydrogen over battery are many. I’ll spare you. Trust me. And Jeremy. There’s also the minor issue of how electricity is ‘made’ in this country, predominantly. Whereas hydrogen just produces it all by issself. Furthermore, regular petrol and Diesel engines can actually be converted to hydrogen, which you can’t do with ‘lectric.

So why aren’t we promoting such a thing? And this was Clarkson’s point. Because someone made a hybrid electric car and the government went into ‘panic mode’. Or perhaps ‘sound byte mode’ and attached the salvation of the entire planet on ‘the future of transport’. Elon Musk knows opportunities when he sees ‘em and responded to the challenge. No-one in government appeared to look at the big picture (how unusual?) nor consider the alternatives. Some of which, like hydrogen, had been with us for ages. So instead, driven by the burning imperative (I’m sure there’s a pun in there somewhere) of climate change and the ACT NOW!!!!! bullshit spouted by the reactionaries, they went for the less joined-up version of problem solving. Which was doing it without thinking about it.

And we thought the pandemic decisions were unusual?

These are first world problems. Because third worlders walk. 2nd world people… who cares?

So before we tear up any more of the planet, at masssssiiiiiiiiive environmental cost, looking for Lithium and all the other conductive materials required to make batteries for which we burn coal to charge, someone needs to take a step back and have a re-think.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx