Once you go tackling an invasive species, you realise just why it’s so successful

"Yes, of course I’d be useless in the woods. I’d drop the matches on the way out the door, begging to be fed from the first house I see in the woods only to find it’s inhabited by cannibals..."

We are out the other end of the Olympics. (And in the case of the Seine swimmers, the Olympics is out the other end of them.) The next stage is What Can We Learn From the Olympics For Life?

I simply cannot imagine running with a GAA goalpost using it to push myself over the height of an average semi-detached

"Thanks to the Olympics, I’m now eight times more likely to say the word ‘pommel’"

"I look at the mechanics buzzing around my jalopy, trying to guess what their reactions are. Why are they laughing? IT’S NOT FUNNY."

"An entirely homemade solution to an external threat. Not only the moving of Coronation Street but also the moving of the aerial by interfering adult children."

"One of about 20 mixed native trees I planted on a formerly ferny few square metres of rough ground at the edge of one of my mother’s fields."

"It’s nice to watch what life is like if you don’t spend time worrying about trivial things like work and chores and that thing you said to another parent at the school gate or whether crime is on the up or fretting about that friend who has recently got into chemtrails."

"...the Tour De France was the best way to glimpse France beyond a late night Quare Film, or “les Francais adore le Piat d’Or”, or “ou est le centre de George Pompidou?”