Peter Rhodes on a mysterious smoke alarm, lifting lockdown and the unbelievable lightness of boating

Organisations representing angling, golf and other outdoor pursuits are pressing for their followers to be granted early release from lockdown. And who can argue with that? There are no problems with spacing and getting thousands of honest, sharp-eyed folk back into the countryside may reduce rural crime. And yet . . .

You see, I admit I am missing the unbelievable lightness of boating. On my wall is a photo of my first boat, a lugger, drawn up on the sunny shore of Loch Lomond in May 2007, ready for an evening's fishing. The lugger is a creature of water, dragged on to land and stranded like an ungainly seal. And all you have to do is lean your body against the hull, push gently, release it from the surly bonds of sand and (all being well) hop nimbly aboard. Then comes that magical moment, beloved of all sailors, when the water takes the boat's weight and it glides out over the shallows, back into its element and you hoist the mainsail, and all is bliss.

But that's not really the point. How can sailors, golfers and anglers be allowed to pursue their interests at a time when fans of football, rugby and other crowd-creating sports cannot? And while I yearn for the wobble of the waves, what about a bit of solidarity with the hundreds of poor devils who are still waking up with a temperature and a dry cough and realising their ordeal by Covid is beginning? Isn't there something unseemly about a few of us being allowed to rejoice in the sun and surf until this contagion is tamed?

A smoke alarm began beeping to warn us the battery was low. We have three smoke alarms upstairs and you'd think it would be easy to figure out which one was duff. But each time I homed in on one suspect, the beep seemed to come from another. So I took them all down from the ceilings and laid them in a line on the kitchen table, waiting for the guilty one to beep. The beep sounded but it was far-off. After half-an-hour we found it. The alarm was at the back of a shelf in the depths of the cubbyhole under the stairs. It must have been there for ages, the battery slowly losing power. There are two lessons here. The first is not to leave smoke alarms in silly damn places.

The second lesson is that if you are ever evicted by a wicked landlord or are forced to sell your house to a rapacious purchaser, slip a few smoke alarms under the floorboards, behind kitchen units or in the distant recesses of the attic before you leave. A year from now they will drive him mad. You didn't hear this from me.

It's my birthday today. I am self-identifying as 37.