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This has been great, this summer. I sat in the garden yesterday, shelling batches of peas and broad beans ready for freezing, Test Match Special on the radio, listening to bird song, smelling roses. The horses peered over the fence, the dog lay at my feet, Captain Pusstasticus stretched in the sun. Very Cold Beer awaited as a reward. Windows open 24 hours a day, light and heat cheering and warming the bones. Gosh, how we’ve missed this. Is it so much to ask to have a summer every year?

Mind you, the Coconut-Eating Crab is in charge of summer. As you know, I follow the Way of the Crab, the swami Captain Kay having taught me many years ago of the wiles of the pincered deity who rules our existence as we shuffle across the stage constantly seeking the unattainable, just like The Crab’s earthly manifestation. To The Crab, we are the vehicles of vengeance.

We seek the perfection of summer, but the Crab makes the brambles grow and the flies bite; He, She or It puts dust in our eye and pollen up our nose. The Crab it is who makes underwear cling and wasps sting.

So why follow the Crab? It’s true that The Crab has no mercy; but an awareness of the power of the Crab can, philosophically, provide some welcome insulation, and for all who enjoy a little schadenfreude, the Crab is the best deity on offer.

May The Crab be with you (not that you have any choice in the matter).

High on a hill

I’m afraid that were I to meet, standing high on a hill, a lonely goatherd about to yodel, I would not be tolerant. Lonely, yodelling goatherds are not among my favourite things. Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against goatherds per se, and I would not want a goatherd to be lonely; it is the combination of goatherd and yodelling as depicted in The Sound of Music that gets my, well, goat.

But here’s a remarkable thing. Under duress, and doing a favour for a friend, I went off to Sterts Theatre to see The Sound of Music in order to write a review; less, I thought, a case of Climbing Every Mountain than of looking forward to a rapid descent down the other side as soon as humanly possible.

And it was brilliant. A wonderful reminder of why I admire enormously anybody prepared to stand up in front of other people and, without artificial assistance or the aid of television producers, create. Whatever they’re creating. The Sound of Music had wonderful singing, clever staging, and, most of all, total conviction from everybody involved. It was brilliant. Go and see it. Tell the goatherd I sent you.

As low as you can go, 1

Last week I was chatting to somebody from the wonderful St Petroc’s Society, the Cornwall-wide charity that helps the homeless.

She was telling me that the number of people sleeping rough is increasing dramatically; I looked behind her to see if the lying Iain Duncan-Smith was there to lie his usual lie that it’s nothing to do with benefit cuts or austerity. In fact, Cornwall now has the second-highest number of homeless people by local authority area in the country, behind Westminster, a proud achievement indeed.

If you have a chance to support St Petroc’s, which tries to help people before they sink too deep in the swamp of homelessness, where despair can lead to drink and drugs, please do so. Unless, of course, you’re one of the liar Iain Duncan-Smith’s true believers and obediently think they’re all wastrels and scroungers and it’s nothing to do with any of us.

As low as you can go, 2

A little snippet for any survivors of Thatcher’s Stone Age who still, in the face of all sense and reason, believe privatising public services is a good idea.

Sir Ian Byatt, for ten years director general of the water industry watchdog Ofwat, endorsed a highly critical report by the thinktank CentreForum, which investigated the financial activities of privatised water companies.

The report found, and Sir Ian confirmed, that excessive dividend payments in typical shareholder returns of between 20 and 30 per cent a year meant some companies were having difficulty funding vital projects.

For example, Thames Water, having coughed up fortunes in dividends to its private owners, is now seeking support from the taxpayer to improve sewers in its area. Oh, and it wants permission to put its bills up by £80 a year too, of course.

The privatised companies, Sir Ian and the CentreForum report confirmed, funded dividend payments through debt, which meant they were able to slash their tax bills – so they ripped us off to pay the rich, and then didn’t contribute anything to the country in return. Now they’re mired in debt which we’re paying for. Now that’s what you call the benefit of the free market!

Sir Ian wants legal limits on dividends; I want our public services taken back from the thieves.