Peter Rhodes on a vintage cherry crop, a Devon silver lining and knowing absolutely nothing about football

Silver-lining department. By rights, we would just have returned home from a two-week holiday in Devon. The bad news was that our June 2020 booking had to be cancelled because of the virus. The good news is that we seem to have missed one of the wettest, blowiest and most miserable fortnights of the year.

In a live early-morning interview, Health Secretary Matt Hancock referred to Marcus Rashford, the footballer and free school-meals campaigner, as “Daniel Rashford.” He first apologised for “misspeaking” and later blamed it on his daughter's fascination with Harry Potter (star: Daniel Radcliffe). The one thing he, or any other politician could never admit is not knowing who Marcus Rashford is.

For it is a fundamental requirement for all politicians to pretend they have a deep knowledge and affection for football even if, like half the UK population, they know nothing about it. Being born entirely without the football gene, I admit I didn't recognise the name. But I like what I know now of Mr Rashford and I bet we will hear more of him. He looks like a natural, when the time is right, to transfer from the Premier League to the House of Commons.

After turning down a black priest on the grounds that the parish was “monochrome white working class,” the Church of England beat a hasty retreat and announced it had later “reached out” to Augustine Tanner-Ihm to learn about his experiences. “Reached out” is a woolly, weasely term of our time. It implies deep concern and positive action but what it sometimes means, in my limited experience, is “We've sent him an email.”

Some weeks ago I referred to the massive display of blossom on fruit trees. Sure enough, we now have a vintage crop of cherries, hanging in huge crimson bunches. By day the birds peck them. By night, two young badgers hoover up the fallen fruit. Now, you might imagine that badgers, being rough-and-tumbly little chaps, would simply swallow the cherries whole and poo the stones later. Not so. They leave behind stones with every morsel of flesh sucked and nibbled off. While the back end of a badger is famously rough, the mouth seems remarkably delicate. One for you, Mr Packham.

According to research by Reuters a few days ago, The Guardian is Britain's most trusted non-financial newspaper. The same research tell us that only 18 per cent of Britons trust the Guardian. Both statements are true but the joy of statistics is that we can choose the ones we like.

As seriously ill Covid-19 patients are steadily being saved by the cheap and cheerful asthma and arthritis pill Dexamethasone, you may recall my prediction from April 15: “In the next couple of weeks one or more of the hundreds of existing drugs designed to fight other diseases and now being re-tested will be bringing Covid-19 victims back from Heaven's gate.” Right forecast, wrong timescale.