Peter Reynolds

I want to know the names of the top 10 earners at Barclays, the Halifax and the Nationwide.  These are the banks that I grace with my business and I want to know the names of the toerags that have been messing with our economy at our expense for their own personal profit.

These individuals aren’t gentlemen.  They are profiteers, pirates even, and each one of them should be revealed, reviled, pilloried and put on public display with their multimillion pound scorecards.

The time is well past for any nonsense about confidentiality, privacy, data protection (the biggest joke of them all).  We want to know who are the gamblers, the selfish, arrogant thieves who have destroyed our economy for their own selfish ends.

I urge every customer of every bank to write and demand this information.  Then we would see who are these individuals sitting smugly on their fat backsides whilst the rest of us face the consequences of their greed.

Of course, these individuals are the product of a corrupt system and in their position as those that must carry the can they too are victims – but victims with big houses, fast cars, swimming pools and fat, fat bank accounts, so huge that they and their heirs are insulated from any further worry for the rest of their lives.

They must be called to account.

So Nicole Cooke, carrying the Welsh Dragon high, cycles to a gold medal and sets the standard for the British Olympic team.

Meanwhile, at home, far too many people are adopting a cynical, world weary attitude.  Shame on you!

Barbara Ellen, sexy new columnist at The Observer says “Call off 2012, Beijing Is Boring”.  Well, she may be appreciable eye candy (useful for all those soirees columnists just have to attend) but she is resorting to the oldest trick in the journo’s book – if you can’t say something sensible then slag it off.

More disturbing is the pub talk, the man on the Clapham omnibus who also claims to be bored.

Listen killjoys, cynics, non-Welsh Brits, in a fortnight’s time there will be a tear welling up in your eye.  You’ll want to and, undeservingly, will, feel part of it.  Your patriotic spirit will be reborn and you’ll be screaming as the next British runner, cyclist or egg and spooner takes gold.

The Olympics are a wonderful, inspiring celebration of mankind.  I remember them throughout my childhood and I am cheering for our boys and girls from the very beginning.  The rest of you are welcome to the party however late you arrive.

Sorry, can’t resist this.  It always used to send me into fits of giggles at my own stupid joke when I lived in London. I’d forgotten the lady existed until she was on the national news the other night…

She’s been nicking them skins again!!

Where else in the world is there anyone as consistently, ever-increasingly sexy and gorgeous as Christine?

What future is there for those of us who are too old, too ugly and too hopeless?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7529694.stm

It moved me to see how Welsh pride and hwyl transcends race and religion as Sarika Singh emerged from the High Court and was determined to say “I am a proud Welsh, Punjabi Sikh girl”

Before I am outblogged by a blogger, I have to put in my plug, plugs and more plugs for The Bluebell Inn in Emsworth.  Until now, mentioned only once in Walking The Dog 2, I have certainly been remiss in failing to acknowledge the important part that The Bluebell plays in my life in Emsworth.  I am, after all, desperate for a free roast beef and horseradish baguette.

I am not a pub person.  Or, at least, I wasn’t until I started frequenting The Bluebell but even here I confess that having walked in in the evening I have walked straight out again after discovering a tribe of boorish, beered-up twenty and thirty-somethings.

During the day though, The Bluebell is a delight.  It is only right that I share the responsibility of propping up the bar with Owain and Sid because otherwise it might fall down and where would Giles and Chris and Nicole be then?

Tom,  the former landlord, who I hold very responsible for the genial atmosphere that prevails is presently recuperating at home. My sympathy for him is, of course, not at all compromised by the three weeks he spent in Cuba with his 19 year old girlfriend immediately before his health scare.

Capone and Carla are made very welcome and I am considering starting a fan club for them as potentially a far more lucrative business than anything else I have ever done!

It is no exaggeration at all, though, with or without a roast beef and horseradish baguette, to say that the food at The Bluebell is exceptional.  I have never been less than delighted with anything from a pot of cockles to a baked sea bream.  They even do the best frozen chips in town!

Last week I travelled to Dorset and, just north of Weymouth, called into The Old Ship Inn at Upwey.  There I selected, for £5.95, a ham and tomato baguette which, when it arrived, was probably a fraction longer than the word itself and “filled” with carefully crazy-paved supermarket ham (we have to go metric here because two millimetres thick doesn’t work in imperial) and a couple of slivers of tomato.  That, combined with ten crisps and two slices of red onion, made me appreciate what I have at home.

The Bluebell does not even deserve comparison with that.  Nowhere will you find finer food at better value and if I’m offered a roast beef and horseradish baguette for saying so, I will, for propriety’s sake (but very reluctantly) give it to my dogs.

http://www.bluebellinnemsworth.co.uk/

Alright, I know it’s sad, I’m sad. I just love Celebrity Masterchef!

The programme has always captured me but this series seems particularly special.  It’s the gorgeous, sweet, delightful Liz, the passionate, intense, slightly bumbling Mark or the precise, determined but equally passionate Andy.

The thing that really gets me is the music.  I think it’s what they call “uplifting House”.  It drives progress.  It drives suspense.  It builds.  It fulfills.  And it turns around again.  It builds.  It drives.  The buzz intensifies. And, it, crescendoes.

That’s what really pulls me in and I love this show!  Food is, of course, a wonderful narcotic and the whole experience of this fabulous television is a rush.

The drama never ceases.  I care deeply for each of the contestants.  As their eyes well up so do mine – again! Triumph and disaster.  Amazing how they compete against each other yet weld together as a team, caring and supporting each other.  It’s wonderful to see the pride in Gregg and John’s faces!

Forgive me while I retch at my own sentimental nonsense but I’ll definitely be watching the final!

I have become an immense fan of Hugh’s recently.  River Cottage was always a programme that I enjoyed but with the assistance of the marvellous torrent site (forget the iPlayer) www.thebox.bz   he has become an obsession.

If I need a little relaxation, a little soothing, noone does it better than Hugh.  It is, perhaps, ironic, that he shares the name of my younger brother who is the most sour, miserable character, for Mr F-W always lifts my spirits and inspires me towards a gentler life and to chop my onions, crush my garlic and delicately simmer my vegetables.

I confess that I do not always hold entirely true to his philosophy.  My pungent tomato soup tonight was nurtured from my homegrown coriander but the remaining ingredients were Tesco’s onions, garlic and tinned tomatoes and it tasted bloody marvellous.

It looks as if Emsworth is to see the back of me shortly – credit crunch, buy-to-let mortgage, landlord’s wife is pregnant – and I am inspired towards Dorset.  My clifftop writer’s retreat, above the crashing surf, my dogs, my garden, etc, etc.  Protest not! I am paid to dream and to chronicle my ambition and that is where it now lies.

This very week I am travelling west (as every young man should) and hoping that my nirvana is ahead.  I have set my sights betwen Lyme Regis and Swanage and somewhere there I intend to find my new home.

Already handsome, overrun with female admirers and, dare I say, happy, now his career as a media celebrity is taking off.  Evan will appear on “This Morning” on Monday (30th June 2008) to promote his bionic hand, his Channel 5 documentary and his general magnificence!  All hail the conquering hero, my son!

Just watched a rough cut of my heroic younger son’s TV debut where his “bionic” hand, replacing the one he lost in a road accident two years ago, is featured alongside an American woman’s “bionic” eye.   As usual, I had no success in holding back the tears.  Nothing can diminish my admiration for his courage and fortitude in the face of what would have devastated a lesser man.  So watch out for the broadcast on Channel 5 on 2nd July 2008 when all will be revealed and no doubt Evan will provoke an emotional outpouring and a flood of fan mail from pretty young girls throughout the country.