All truly great ideas are simple which is one of the reasons I will have no truck with Einstein.  Any theory so complicated that no-one understands it cannot be true and for those of you who have not studied it, his explanation of the universe has gaping holes and will, hopefully in my lifetime, be reduced to unicorn territory. But back to me.

Those of us who would given our first born child in return for never having to listen to one more word about Brexit have discovered that there is yet another circle of hell. Whilst the politicos were off stuffing their faces with chocolate over Easter the desperate-for-a-story media discovered climate change and have been attempting, possibly for a newsroom bet, to reduce us to the same level of self harming boredom on a second subject. But in yet another of my extraordinary revelations the solution has appeared.

The planet is in crisis, we have only months, probably weeks left and absolutely everything is on the brink of extinction.  (See Grauniad newspaper most days). What, gentle reader(s), is the source of all this misery and despair?  What is responsible for the destruction of our beautiful planet?  Us.  You.  Me.  It is people and by a leap of logic that should be obvious to everyone, all we have to do is get rid of the humans.  No more cars and factories poisoning our air, no more pesticides polluting our rivers and not a single fragment of plastic ever again.  And, as a buy one get one free bonus, world peace. Genius or what?

Apparently if the UK was completely carbon neutral by next Wednesday it would make a whole 1% of difference to the overall problem so that’s a waste of time.  By way of contrast China currently has  13 million people employed in coal mining, which in their scale of things is the equivalent of the population of Builth Wells, but it makes rather a mockery of me re-cycling paper waste in suburban London.  If we stopped buying Chinese products all their smoke-belching factories would close and that might actually help.  Dear old Donald Trump may well be attempting this very result in his own ham fisted manner  by imposing outrageous import taxes.  Who had him down as a Green?

On to practicalities which I have yet to refine.  Do we kill everyone at once, or the oldest every year? We could just ban all new babies and the problem would be sorted in about a century.  Perhaps offer the prospect only to climate change supporters as they are most likely to leap at the chance of doing something that will make a real contribution.  Should we spare eskimos, Amazonian tribes and aborigines on the basis that they have damaged least and suffered most from ‘civilisation’?  There is a lot to discuss but I have never been one to get bogged down in minutiae.  Anyone can do that.  I merely give you an elegant and unarguable solution. Now, who wants to be first?

As a sometime resident of Brighton, and more particularly the Kemp Town area, I am no stranger to the notion of camping.  Even popping to the shops for tonic (I never run out of gin.  Obvs.) one can see any number of fey young men engaged in that very activity, in the style of Kenneth Williams at his finest.  It has however been brought to my attention that there is another reading of the phrase.  Step forward Staff Nurse who has at sometime in her life fallen into the clutches of the Friends of Baden Powell rather than Dorothy and has developed an addiction to life under canvas.  Unfortunately, like all zealots, she will not rest until the rest of us have undergone a Damascene conversion to the world of tent pegs and guy ropes. (FYI disappointingly nothing to do with male bondage).

Her latest attempt has been to send me an article listing no fewer that 8 different reasons why camping is A Good Thing, including the news that it is vital for one’s vitamin D levels.  Vitamin D is also known as the ‘sunshine’ vitamin which I would guess would have to involve the sun actually shining on the tent and it’s occupants, not an everyday event in Scotland.  Call me pessimistic but I would rather rely on a handy bottle of pills from Boots or a trip to the South of France.  Results a great deal more certain.

No mention was made of the origins of the article but cash money would suggest that it was from ‘Tenting Weekly’ or ‘The Backpackers Bible’ rather than Vogue and the eighth and final claim was that it would cut down on consumerism.  I beg to differ, Staff Nurse.  Am I alone in recalling the preparation for a recent trip, which I was unable to join as I had a reservation at a luxury hotel?  Did it not involve four of us spending hours, literally hours decanting what appeared to be the entire contents of your home into two cars.  Which were barely big enough?  And this for a trip lasting all of two nights? Not quite my notion of minimalism.

And in the interest of safeguarding your mental health, dear reader,  I am not even going to explore the full horror of the wardrobe options suffice to say that they would involve  ‘comfortable’ shoes and rubber wear, and again, not in a good or remotely entertaining way.

From the deep, warm, dry comfort of my hotel room I spent hours sending them pictures featuring the beauty of the bathroom, the fluffiness of the bath towels, the featheriness of the pillows (Continued on Page 94) to reassure them that I was not having too wretched a time on my own.  Sadly the news failed to arrive as there was no mobile phone coverage in their remote, desolate, cold, rainy and windswept field.  I rest my case.