I really like your blog, and your advice on gheeba is a timely reminder, but I can suggest that the English intellectualise sport to the extent that it actually interferes with playing it.

BTW, Yayha Birt is an excellent choice for the city circle.

When I was in the UK recently, I remember both Feltz and the tall skinny one with the tan (UKIP wallah)

I do not have fond memories of either. There stock and trade is to manufacture outrage where none exists.

About the cricket: a lot of kids don’t like it simply because it requires standing around and waiting for things to happen, rather than running up and down a field with a ball for 90 minutes or so. I always liked cricket (not that I’ve ever paid to watch a match), but people are only interested in the game when England win, or lose drastically (such as the time when they lost to a semi-professional Zimbabwean team). In this country they will allow a large-ish football match to cause huge disruption, but county cricket (without which there would be no England team) has nothing like as much of a following.

now 6/114

you people are a disgrace, don’t they teach how to catch and throw in school?

“Aside from the conspicous beards, both males and females appear almost completely bald. In fact, they are covered with short coarse hair that becomes less dense as the animal ages. Their skin, which lies in many folds and wrinkles, can be 4 cm thick. This tough skin is the thickest on the neck and shoulders of adult males. As walruses age their skin becomes paler. When the animals enter the water they become even paler as blood flow to the skin is restricted. Conversely, when walruses are warm their skin is flushed with blood and they appear to be very red, almost “sunburned.” Walruses have no external ears and their eyes are small and pig-like”

To return to the main point. This type of story first started in Shepperton a country town in rural Victoria where the Iraqi migrant community live. This issue was fanned by the right wing press. The Muslims go out of their way to book at times when the general population would not usually swim, eg Sunday evening or Saturday evening or mid morning during the week, and only for 1 hour out 168. Despite this the professionally outraged section of the ignorant tight arsed club always feel compelled to complain that their human rights are being violated for that hour.

I would suggest that you take a very firm line against these people and characterise them as what they are, small minded xenophobes, who are adorned only by the decaying rags of a once great culture, and now seek to strip others of theirs .

It only remains to be said that England are 5/112 and the only pom with calcification within the spine is a African. For all of you who believe that they can come back from this, I have two words, Tim Henman.

Do the women actually cover from neck to ankle in an all-female swimming session? When I’ve seen Muslim women swim in women’s health clubs, some wear one-piece swimsuits over those… I don’t know what they’re called… biker’s shorts? So they’re covered to the knee, anyway.

I had actually got the wrong end of the stick about this swimming pool story, which turns out to be nothing very much.

I have strong views on the niqab because I don’t think faces should be covered in public, but this swimming thing - well lots of swimming pools have separate sessions for men and women, probably geared towards different religions, but also because many women, religious or not, feel less self-conscious and more relaxed swimming when there are no men around. (Less splashy in the lanes too - so many men churn the water up with their front crawl and plough through it like a torpedo.)

The swimsuit requirements are just an extension of this.