My Hibernian Escape Clause.

Ashbourne was unusually replete with striking young women today. They were all slim, good looking, perfectly put together, and between 5ft 8 and 6ft tall. I wondered whether I’d been transported to another dimension. ‘Have I gone to heaven or to Sweden?’ I asked myself. And then I caught site of Gimli in Sainsbury’s and realised that I was still on Middle Earth and the Shire was but a short car journey away.

And I’m being reprehensible again, aren’t I? Objectifying women as usual. I stand indicted with drooping head and lowered tail, cowering in expectation of severe reproach. Except I don’t because it’s not my fault; it’s the Irish component in my ancestry. We all know what a roguish lot those Irish men are in the matter of pretty colleens, don’t we? You only have to listen to their folk songs (which I do quite a lot) to get that one. And so my defence is ready:

‘Don’t blame me, madam; blame the Irish in my bloodline. The rest of it – which, as far as I know, is a wholesome mixture of Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and possibly a peer of the realm a couple of generations back – is the stuff of a perfect gentleman.’

So there you are. I plead not guilty. (The ‘peer of the realm’ stuff, by the way, is probably a fantasy engendered by my grandmother’s habit of secrecy regarding a certain matter, but what’s the point of life if you can’t indulge in the odd fantasy now and then? Putin probably thinks he’s descended from Genghis Khan.)