British public life often tends toward sitcom, and you imagine that once the catastrophic economic fallout of her time in office has faded – in a generation or two’s time – Liz Truss’s 40-odd days in Downing Street might yet be viewed in those terms. Certainly, that seems the legacy she most craves.
The first extracts from her farcical book, Ten Years to Save the West, reveal it to be written with all those gifts for “Accidental Partridge” that she displayed in office (key quote: “For too long, the political debate has been dominated by how we distribute a limited economic pie. Instead, we need to grow the pie so that everyone gets a bigger slice.”). Her memoir’s most immediately memorable scenes are ready-made for canned laughter. There’s the one in which she spent her few days in power itching because of an outbreak of fleas in the prime ministerial apartment (a parting gift, she half-implies, of the Johnsons’ dog, Dilyn); the one in which her promise to the nation of “delivery, delivery, delivery” falls at the first hurdle of a missing Ocado order; the one in which she finds the fridge full of protein shakes labelled “Raab”, from her power-hungry colleague; and the one in which she struggles to get a mobile phone signal on a call with the US secretary of state and has to hang out of an upstairs window to hear about the invasion of Ukraine. There will never be a second season.
The Royal Navy, desperate for recruits, has apparently, done away with the longstanding requirement of candidates to be able to swim. In light of recent figures from Swim England, the change of policy is no doubt pragmatic. For many kids, gone are those shivery afternoons spent diving for bricks or blowing up pyjamas to make a float.
It remains a government commitment that “by the end of primary school, all children should be able to swim at least 25 metres unaided, using a range of strokes”, but largely because of decreased funding and access, and a shortage of teachers, about one in three children leave school without those skills.
You are reminded that one of the first things that the coalition government did on arrival in office in 2010 was to cancel Gordon Brown’s £130m plan for “free swimming” at public baths for all under-16s and over-60s – one of the pledges for a 2012 Olympic legacy. Not to worry, though. In future, it is suggested, rather than be thrown in at the deep end to complete a mandatory Royal Navy swimming test, hopeful applicants will be able to “self-declare” proficiency.
Like all of us, I’m often anxious, these days, to find distracting alternatives to the news. No doubt with this in mind, my elder daughter alerted me last week to a Dutch website, “The Fish Doorbell”.
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It has a simple premise: “Every spring, fish migrate upstream in search of places to spawn. They swim through the centre of the city of Utrecht. Unfortunately, the boat lock is closed during spring. You can help the fish.”
Assistance is quite straightforward, though it requires a degree of patience. There is a camera livestreaming in the murky depths of the river, and every time a frustrated-looking fish appears in view, eyeing the camera, you press a bell on screen to alert the lock keeper in Utrecht to open a little door and allow it to follow its instincts upriver. It is the slowest of all video games. Needless to say, I am hooked.
Tim Adams is an Observer columnist
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