Tonight I am jolly proud of all my children.
They are all achieving far more than I ever did. I am aware that this is not exactly a challenging target, but I am impressed all the same.
Number Two Daughter rang this afternoon, full of stories about their latest adventures.
They have joined forces with some enthusiastic hippies, and some Canadian First People. These latter are the people who already lived in Canada when the rest of the world discovered it.
I recall that this detail always perplexed me as a child. We were taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America. Aged about five, I wondered if that meant that the Red Indians had simply not noticed it and needed it pointed out to them. Hey, chaps, look at those mountains. Those ones, over there. Surprise. Fancy you not spotting those.
I felt similar incomprehension about Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs, but was not brave enough to ask questions in either case, nor can I imagine what my primary school teacher, who was no dialectician, might have said in explanation.
Anyway, the Mrs. Number Two Daughters have buzzed off with the First People and the hippies to try and prevent a logging company from felling a forest full of thousand-year-old trees.
People are chaining themselves to concrete blocks and the police are trying. not very enthusiastically, to release them so that they can be properly arrested and legally locked up.
The Number Two Daughters have been helping them, the hippies, not the police, obviously.
I think that this is a jolly worthwhile activity. There is nothing that you can do with a thousand year old dead tree that you can’t do perfectly well with a thirty year old one, and anything that has had a thousand year life span should, in my opinion, be left to carry on with it.
It is a place called Fairy Creek, and since it is your world as well, you might consider looking it up online and write to the Canadian Government imploring them not to be so reckless.
The Government has allowed the trees a temporary two-year stay of execution. Nobody thinks that this is enough, not least because there is now only three percent of this forest left. I am no save-the-planet activist, but I do like trees, and hence am very proud of the Number Two Daughters and their determined stand, how magnificent to have principles and to make a fuss about them.
I am feeling rather pleased with the others as well. Oliver is slogging away in Scotland, trying his very best. Lucy is keeping villains off the street and writing essays about the best ways to stop people being naughty. She has just been to London to see her friend, and has come back feeling cross. Her friend thinks that it is too stressful to manage a part time job whilst studying for a degree. Lucy is managing a full-time stressful job whilst she does her degree, and Number One Daughter is not only doing the degree, but a job, a family and the World Championships.
Finally, Number One Daughter, you will be very pleased to hear, has done very well in her competition. Her team came second, and they have qualified for the finals of the Cross Fit World Championships. They are called the Cross Fit Games, and they will be held in Wisconsin in July. The very fittest people in the very whole world will be there, jumping on and off things and dashing about and lifting heavy things, whilst the rest of us look on in flabby admiration.
Obviously I am very proud indeed, and we have been contemplating whether or not it might be possible to get to America and back without the Government noticing and locking us up in some appalling quarantine hotel for weeks.
We know really that it is not.
Thanks, Boris.
