When I was a boy our family had a dog by the name of Gilbert. He was of uncertain provenance but had a pleasing look about him.
I adored old Gil. In many ways he was my best friend, for I did not mix well with my contemporaries as I was thought to be odd. I was beaten by bullies and generally flung about by life. Mine was not a happy childhood.
But Gilbert forgave me for all my strangeness and cared for me as I was. He was not a young dog when my father acquired him from a distant aunt who had gone mad because of a recalcitrant fiancé. He did not warm to my father, who felt the dog was a reactionary, but he became my companion from the start. 

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After receiving  many e-mails saying that your Sundays would not be the same without the old fellow, he is back. Thank you for caring as I had no idea that he mattered to you so much. Thank you.

I shot into my club the other day, panting like a fish out of water, and straight into my comfy wing-back chair by the large bay window with its glorious view of the harbour. I waved down my preferred waiter, Rogers, who leapt towards the bar at my unspoken but clear request for a restorative martini, not unlike plasma for a battleground wound. Some days are just like that, wouldn’t you say?
I know you must be wondering why your old Major would sprint to his sanctuary by the sea with his mind teeming in fear. The answer is: I read too much history, especially just before bed.

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In 48 BC when Julius Caesar realized that Alexander the Great’s library was on fire with no chance of salvaging it, he threw himself on the ground and wept. He could not come to grips with the fact that he had destroyed something so precious, especially as his hero in life was Alexander.
Julius had kidnapped the boy-king Ptolemy, husband to his sister Cleopatra, in order to put her on the throne of Egypt, when the king’s army attacked the Romans in Alexandria. Caesar lit the merchant ships in the harbour on fire to create a diversion, but in doing so the harbour buildings began to burn and the blaze spread to the world-famous library with disastrous results. Built three centuries before by one of Alexander’s generals, it was the premier site of knowledge of its time, only to be lost in the end because of Caesar’s lust for the 21-year-old Cleopatra. But it proves the adage that you often hurt the thing you least want to.

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I know that I have written on this subject before as I want none of my loyal readers to think that their Major has lost the plot as it were, but we must begin to cheer up and put a little jump into our step. We have become I am afraid too dependent on the great nanny of government rather than the loving arms of our families which are after all designed to nurture and forgive us all our trespasses etc.
I am jumping around a bit I know but can one imagine living in London during the 17th century where one got a ringside seat to the bloodiest civil war in English history, followed by regicide, “warts and all” Cromwell, and 10 years of the depressing commonwealth. However that century was just warming up for it was visited no fewer than five times by our friend, the Black Death . 7000 London fatalities a week in 1665 with many unfortunates being boarded up alive in their hovels to stop the spread of the rat flea named Xenopsylla Cheopis.

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