Beach Hut Heaven

This year I decided to rent a beach hut for a week at Broadstairs in Kent.  The huts are managed by 'Your Leisure' (Your Leisure website) on behalf of Thanet County Council and the cost for a week was a very reasonable £97.  I picked Viking Bay 

Viking Bay, Broadstairs

as it was the nearest to the town and a hut on the beach, rather than on a higher level.  I had never been to Broadstairs before, but they rented out beach huts by the week, so that was enough for me. 

When I arrived at the beach, I was a little put out that the beach 'huts' looked more like a row of Ikea friendly blue and yellow garages, than the picturesque beach hut I had envisaged, however the sea views could not be faulted.  

The beach hut was equipped with running water, a gas supply with gas trivet and two deckchairs.  I had bought a cooler, camping kettle and other supplies with me that I thought I might need for a week at the beach.   I hadn't thought of matches, but I asked a small group sitting nearby on the beach.  They didn't have matches or a lighter but asked me if I would photo them as a group.  I did so, not liking to admit that I didn't have my glasses on therefore they would be lucky if any part of them was actually in the photo.  Then one of them suddenly remembered there were matches in their hut and I was able to make a cup of tea.  I promptly returned the favour by offering to take a decent photo of them. 

Over the next week I had several friends come to visit me at my beach hut, all of whom loved it and have asked to be invited again next year (I have already booked the hut again).  We enjoyed lazy days, seagull free beach picnics and the occasional long walk to take in the scenery. They all also offered to treat me to fish and chips in thanks for the day out at the beach.  I turned the third offer down, even I can only eat fish & chips so many times in one week.  One guest bought a hut-warming gift of roses. I loved them and their bright pink hue went perfectly with my picnic set and camp chairs.  

beach hut roses

I had a lovely week at the beach.  It was relaxing and peaceful, the views from the promenade walks were amazing and everyone I encountered was friendly and full of advice.  One evening I wandered off for a walk, and a nearby family, thinking I had gone, very kindly put my deckchair away for me.  The coastline offers miles of sandy beaches with scenic views.  I had luckily picked a week of great weather. I have lived in Kent for 14 years and am quite ashamed that this whole coastline was so new to me.  It was really beautiful.  Kent and Thanet in particular have recently become far too closely associated with elections and Operation Stack, but it has so much more to offer, including a stunning coastline just over an hour from London.  

I had brought books, camera and a notepad to entertain myself, but spent most of my time people watching.  I was much amused by the fact that nearly every small child insisted on 'digging a hole' rather than building sandcastles, and then very quickly wandered off to play on the beach, leaving the adults to carry on digging domes and holes. 

Close encounters of the domed kind, not a child in sight

Until I booked the hut, I had not thought of holidaying in England, but am very glad that I did. Some of my fellow occupants wouldn't consider going anywhere else. Two neighbouring beach huts had been booked on an annual basis by the same families for years.  Another family from Yorkshire arrived later in the week.  The grandfather's father had been stationed in Kent during the war.  His family visited his dad during the war and then he and his wife started coming down when they married, and had come back every year since with their children and grandchildren.   

Despite the beach hut's initial failure to live up to my idyllic image of how a beach hut should look, by the end of the week I was hooked.  The huts have water and gas.  The level above provides a canopy over the beach huts which is helfpul for shade on hot days - and means you can eat in peace without the overly aggressive seagulls swooping down on you.  They may stand in front of you, glaring balefully whilst they try to hypnotise you into giving up your food and one did once hop onto the table, but the canopy provides some level of protection from their avarice.  

seagull free beach picnic

I swam in the sea nearly every day, it was a little chilly at first but soon warmed up.  There was only one day when the weather was not great, but my friend and I were not bothered.  It was still the perfect place to sit and admire the sea and a great base from which to explore the shoreline and nip into the town for a drink or a bite to eat.  

Bleak House

North Foreland Lighthouse, the last lighthouse in the UK to be automated

Stone Bay

It has been quite a grim twelve months for me, so a completely relaxing week by the sea was the perfect antidote.  Next year I may even stay down in Broadstairs for at least some of the week rather than commute every day.  If you are going to commute, however, commuting to the seaside is a lot more attractive than the crowded, gloomy trek into the city.  One of my favourite images from the week was of two teenage boys, who had drifted away from their group and were playing some game on their phones.   They may have still been glued to their androids, but at least they were outside and relaxing on a beach. 

Classy or classless

I had a short debate with a few of my cousins yesterday over whether we are working class or middle class.

I maintain that we are working class.  Several of my cousins insist we are middle class.  One finally decided to end the discussion by insisting that we are working class with middle class issues.  I am pretty sure that my family's issues encompass all classes and even enter a whole new class of their own at times.

We were all born into a working class family.   My grandmother lived in a two-up, two-down house with her seven children throughout most of their childhood.  A few of our parents may have had middle class aspirations, but I still think of myself as working class.  I don't understand why any of us would mind being working class and even less do I understand wanting to be middle class.

One cousin insists that we are middle class because 'we do pilates and we shop in John Lewis'.  There then followed a conversation about 'up down dog', which is apparently not the follow up album to the "Best of Barbara Woodhouse", but seems to have taken over from 'the plank' in the category 'how to make women look stupid whilst charging them for an exercise class'.  I do shop in John Lewis sometimes, but I have never noticed guards on the door checking which social class I belong to.  I may have Edinburgh crystal champagne glasses and Dartington crystal tumblers (wedding gifts which have lasted over 20 years longer than the marriage), but I use them for cava and gin from Aldi.

I even took the BBC's 'what class are you' test (link here) to see if that provided any insight.  It didn't.  When I say it didn't, I mean it disagreed with me, therefore it just isn't a very good measure of what social class I may be.  According to the test I am 'established middle class', mainly because of my  group of friends and social activities.  Although I may have friends who are accountants and university lecturers, I also have friends who are office workers, cleaners, drivers, and unemployed.  I find it odd that the more educated friends hold more weight with the BBC's scale.   If I earned slightly more, or lived with someone on a similar salary to me and went to the opera occasionally, I would apparently be in the elite class.  There is a reason to avoid opera for ever more.

My understanding of social class is clearly very different to the BBC's.  I am working class because I was born into a working class family.  I am working class because I need to work.  I am working class because I vote according to my conscience not because the candidate went to the same public school that I did.  To me, being working class is something to be proud of.  Workers' unions have provided us with voting, more equal terms for women, reasonable working hours, paid holiday, better working conditions and pay etc.  My mother and her siblings overcame huge hurdles and were all determined that their children would have an easier start in life than they had.  Their values are not always my values, they cared to much about what other people think, there was a tendency to value designer labels, where you live, the size of house you have and the type of car you drive over education and financial security.  They didn't have the education to understand the importance of an education.

But they also taught us manners, decency, honesty, family unity, closeness and a sense of belonging.  I will carry on being working class and will occasionally visit my cousins in their middle class nirvanas.  I will keep reminding their children that we are all working class really.  I am very comfortable with who I am.  I do think class distinctions still exist and there is, as has been recently researched, a glass floor protecting middle and upper class children whilst keeping down the brighter children from the working classes.   I also think that this is even more of a reason to affiliate with our working class roots.  I don't want the next generation to aspire to be middle class, with all the smug, Hyacinth style connotations that has. I want the next generation to be an educated working class, bringing with it better values to society and ensuring a more level playing field for all, rather than selling off all the state school playing fields for the benefit of cronies in property development.

To drop out or to trickle out

Every now and again I get the urge to drop out and just be a hippy.   I am not sure that hippies drink alcohol and I don't do any kind of drugs, even aspirin, so I actually just get the urge to drop out and just be me.  

At the moment I find everywhere except the beach a bit claustrophobic.  I feel the need to be in large, open spaces.  The man who runs the local hardware store suggested that I need to do yoga or take up cycling to relax (he's very chatty and I am easily sidetracked), but I prefer to just swim.  It isn't quite as relaxing as I would like it to be, as my sea-swimming mantra of 'there are no sharks here' has to keep running in my head whilst I swim.  I went to Herne Bay the other week and had a lovely day sitting on the beach and paddling in the sea.  The tide was so far out I would have been halfway to Southend by the time it was deep enough to swim.  As I was only wading rather than swimming I therefore didn't feel the need for the shark mantra - and then got home to hear the news that there had been shark in Herne Bay that day!!!  No wonder the beach was so empty, but this does prove beyond all reasonable doubt that my shark mantra works, so in future I shall always stick to it. 

I have even started to get a bit claustrophobic on the motorway.  I think it is because of all the lights.  Do we actually need our motorways lit up like the pharmacy aisle at the supermarket?  I am convinced they have spotlights in supermarkets on anything embarrassing you may wish to buy.  I was once worried I had head lice (I didn't), but buying a nit comb was an act of torture.  I felt as if I spotlight was following me round Sainsburys.  I just hope I never get thrush, I'd have to wear a blackout suit and sun glasses to avoid that glare.  

How easily I digress, back to hippiedom.  I need a beach I can get to without using a motorway or sitting in traffic, which means I need to live at the beach.  For this to be viable, I also need to work at the beach, but haven't quite worked out what I would work at.  I recently saw a woman selling knitted stuffed fish at the beach.  I am not too sure that is a craze that will take off.  

I could be a beach inspector maybe, if they gave me a taser gun.  I can feel my hippy credentials slipping slightly here, but I am quite short, so I would need assistance in dealing with any anti-social behaviour.  When it is sunny everyone is much happier, so hopefully there will be less anti-social behaviour on the beach.  This also means I have to avoid any resorts renowned for hen and stag nights.  There are two reasons for this, I am unlikely to get a taser gun and I would also be far too tempted to track down the prospective bride or groom and talk them out of a potential mistake.  

I could write a self-help manual.  I have read enough to know that they rarely work, but at I have also read enough to learn all the self-improvement, taking control, own your own life bull sufficiently to regurgitate it for the next bunch of suckers.   After the self-help manual, I could write a guide to divorce for all the couples who ignored my advice and went through with the wedding anyway, only to discover that the best part of it was all the partying before the wedding.  

Maybe if I sold my house and lived in a barge or a mobile home I wouldn't have to work at all, until all the money ran out and the mobile home/barge fell apart, but with a bit of luck and a lot of gin I would be drawing a pension by then.  I am not too sure that either a barge or a mobile home would suit my newly acquired claustrophobia, therefore finding a job at or near the beach is my new year's resolution, because I didn't make any until now.  I make them, I break them, so I found it less stressful to cut out the few days of misguided optimism and settled for automatically rolling all my bad habits into this year.  

Dropping out is proving quite tiring, so I shall retire for the evening and continue with my plans on another day.  I feel that I can afford to take this slowly, it will be more of a trickle out that a sudden drop.  It wouldn't do to rush it, I just need to know that I will get there one day.  

Darcy Bustles

Darcy, the rescue poodle/shih tzu cross, went back to Canterbury Dogs Trust yesterday so she could be checked out by the vet before her adoption.  I would like to thank Ruth and the team at Canterbury Dogs Trust for letting me look after Darcy and for having provided more care and support to me as a fosterer for 4 days than the rescue centre I got Gordon from provided in the months that I fostered him.  Ruth made sure I had out of hours contact numbers, a form authorising a vet to treat Darcy in an emergency, guidance, background on the dog, her bed, leads, harness, food, toys, everything a small dog and I could need for a long weekend visit. 

I like to think she was called Darcy because she bustles everywhere.  I am not generally a big fan of small dogs - a spaniel or beagle are about the minimum of what I would normally consider to be an acceptable size, but Darcy was so sweet I am glad I made an exception.  When I first met her, she was a little shy with me but soon came round.  By the time we reached our first stop, she was attached to me - much of the time physically attached, sitting on my feet even when I went to the loo (always awkward).  I was quite fond of her, despite her vomiting all over the car and need to watch everything I did, everything.  

Darcy in the car - towels and dust sheet all vomit ready

Whether I sat in the garden or the house, she sat beside me.  I put a large old cushion on the sofa so she could sit on that.  When my mum came round, she asked me why I had such an old, tatty cushion and Darcy clearly agreed with mum.  She would sit on the cushion politely for 23 seconds, before moving to either a new cushion or my lap.  

Studiously avoiding 'her' cushion

I am not keen on dogs being in bedrooms.  Darcy, the bustling, mountain-goat dog, was not keen on dogs not being in bedrooms.  Darcy won.  I was determined she would sleep in her own bed though, not in mine,  Eventually she aquiesced.  At 6.30 a.m. on Sunday, let sleeping dogs lie went out of the window and she turned into a frenzied alarm clock, bouncing onto the bed and bounding around until I got up.  The next night I woke in the night to find her at the foot of my bed, so Darcy won again.   On her last morning she was determined I was going to make a fuss of her for as long as possible before I was allowed out of the bed, as if she knew it was her last day with me.

Taking her for a walk was very different to walking a blind, 22kg shar pei.  Gordon would lunge for the park, with me having to make sure he didn't crash into anything or anyone on the way there.  Darcy danced along beside me, almost underfoot, checking behind us constantly.  If she saw a dog in the distance, she would virtually walk backwards.  If she saw a person, she danced and jittered about so much that I felt that I had to let them pass us - with Darcy somewhat puzzled when they ignored her.  She would look at them in amazement and then look up at me for reassurance, batting her unbelievably long eyelashes, until I made a fuss of her - so we could walk on. 

I expected such a tiny dog to be worn out by a short walk, but we would walk for over an hour and she would still be dancing around.  I took her to the tennis courts, where we could play fetch in an enclosed environment.  We would play until she got distracted by peering through the fence at other dogs and I was doing far more of the fetching than she was.  Her energy was amazing and she looked so cute bounding towards me with the ball, her little ears flapping away.  

When I took her back to The Dogs Trust, I didn't think I would be bothered, as I knew she was going to a lovely new home and small dogs are, as I keep on saying, not my thing.  However I wanted more time to say goodbye to her and it felt strange and a bit lonely to get home to an empty house, and unusually quiet to wake up this morning without the bouncing alarm jolting me into the day.  After only a few days, sweet little Darcy had made her mark on me.  She had also left her mark, having wiped her grubby muzzle after every meal on my clothes, the furniture or the carpets.  

I went from being a stranger to being the person she depended upon for everything in about 30 minutes.  I am sure she will be the same with her new family.  Darcy is so sweet and affectionate, she cannot have been badly treated, but even so in the past few weeks she has been in long-term foster (she was weaning her puppies), short-term foster, kennels and then a permanent home and accepted it all without any signs of distress.  It is a credit to The Dogs Trust that an abandoned dog and her puppies have all found such loving homes and are so well prepared for foster and permanent care.  

I had worried that Darcy would struggle to relax in a strange environment

I work full time and have a long commute, so cannot have a dog of my own anymore.  But when I have time off, I will let the Dogs Trust know in case of any further short-term fostering is available.  To anyone thinking of getting a dog, I would advocate fostering first, to find out if a dog really does fit in with your life.  I also highly recommend a rescue dog - there are too many beautiful dogs looking for homes for anyone to be ordering or buying designer puppies.  I know from painful experience that not all rescue centres put dogs first, so it is worth doing some research around the rescue shelter you get the dog from.  The Dogs Trust have several in the UK, and if they are all as good as Canterbury, you could do a lot worse than get a dog from them. (link to The Dogs Trust here).

Update 11 September 2015 - Darcy's new owners returned her in August!  She was such a sweet dog and I could not believe they could just give her back.  Because of work, I just couldn't take her again, but wished I could have, and probably would have kept her.  Luckily for Darcy, the amazing Dogs Trust found her a new foster family last week - who lasted all of a day before being so in love with her they adopted her permanently.  

The Art of Reversing

This blog post is not about my driving.  I can drive and I can reverse park, it is just that most of the time I choose not to.  When I have to park, I find as many empty parking spaces together as I can and park there.  Sometimes I manage to get just into one space.

But today's reversing is brought to you by fridge doors.  The default for fridge doors is apparently to open on the left side.  In a world of political correctness and equality, I feel this is somewhat harsh and outdated, because in my kitchen, the fridge door needs to open on the right side.  Unlike my support of Novak Djokovic at yesterday's Wimbledon final, I cannot be alone in this.

My old, integrated fridge died.  I read somewhere, I think it was Twitter (therefore it must be true) that fridges and extremely hot weather do not go together well.  If this were true then countries with decent summers would not have refrigeration.  But the fridge was 10 years old this year and clearly decided enough was enough.  I googled its symptoms - the internet has made doctors and engineers of all of us.  Unlike googling a medical predicament, where a broken fingernail can be anything from a broken nail to multiple forms of life-threatening cancer, the internet was in agreement that the compressor had gone and it would be cheaper to buy a new fridge.

I decided not to have an integrated fridge again.  I spent hours and hours choosing a fridge.  I wanted a fridge with a door handle - not the weird dip at the top of the door, which is the cause of most broken fingernails in my experience.  I found exactly what I wanted in Currys.  It was the last one in stock, so I said I would take that one.

At 10 p.m. the evening before delivery, I realised that the plinth that went along the bottom of the kitchen units would have to be cut up to get the new fridge in.  To the undoubted joy of my neighbours, my tiny hacksaw and I got to work to make sure the fridge recess was plinth free.

The fridge was delivered on time and I opened the instructions - reversing the door looked like a piece of cake.  It was - a piece of cake you never ever want to be served again.  The left foot was damaged, so the door was resting on the screw, not the rubber surround and the screw holes on the other side of the base had all been filled in with polyfilla, which would not let me easily get a screw in.  The door was therefore held on by damaged foot, rather than by the hinge base.  As it was the last fridge of that kind, I arranged for collection and a refund, a bit miffed that Curry's helpline was 'unavailable' so I had to drive to the shop to do all this.

I then bought another fridge from John Lewis.  I normally buy everything from John Lewis but they hadn't had many fridges in stock and I like to see what I am buying, not just see a photo of it.  Perhaps I have trust issues and lack imagination, but it is fridge, it will hold my wine, gin and tonic, therefore I need to know it is right for the job.  The fridge was delivered at 6.55 a.m.  The door was reversed by 7.15.  I went to put the handle back on the right side of the door - but no.  This was not to be.  The screw holes were filled in with weird plastic plugs which, from the plastic around the screws when removed from the other side, I presumed I had to screw through, but screwing through them dislodged the plastic.  The screws then went in about halfway, the threads refusing to align sufficiently to allow the screws to fully go in.  I tried repeatedly, giving up at 8.40.

How hard can it be to attach a handle to a fridge door?  I was surrounded by screwdrivers, spanners and instruction manuals.  The most difficult part of reversing a door should not be replacing the handle.  This seems to be down to a ridiculous cost saving on Zanussi's part.  Rather than have screws already in the holes, they have plastic plugs, not mentioned at all in the manual.  The instructions for reversing the door are so poorly written I suspect E L James had a hand in it.

This prejudice against right-side opening fridges has to end.  Reversing the door should take 10 minutes, not a week of faffing with various types of fridges, otherwise it should be free.  I am not an expert at DIY, but I can get by.  I planed and rehung my own doors, so I am more than capable of reversing a fridge door.  I have reversed the door, I just can't put the handle on.  One handle, two screws, two screwholes - how can it go so very wrong?  So far John Lewis have been far more helpful and accommodating than Curry's helpline.  I do have a fridge, it does open the way I want it to and it will, in time, have a handle fitted to the door.  In the meantime I despair of the engineer or 'cost saving architect' who thought 'lets save a penny a fridge and have plastic plugs instead of screws'.

Dog or Dustbuster

This weekend I fostered a dog for a few days for the Dog's Trust.  I also bought a hand held, cordless vacuum cleaner.  One of these items I would already find it very hard to part with.

Darcy, the dog, is very cute.  She is a four year old, shih tzu / poodle cross.  She was in foster whilst she weaned her puppies and has come to stay with me until her new forever home is ready.  She is quiet, well-behaved, house trained, sweet affectionate and playful.  She follows me everywhere and was quite determined to sleep on my bed.  I was quite determined she would not, so we compromised.  She slept on the floor until 6.30 a.m. when she bounded onto the bed and bounced up and down until I got up.  Apparently she has had so many litters that she didn't really get to be a pupy herself, so now she has the chance to play which is lovely.  She will make her new owners a lovely pet.

As lovely as she is, she is a bit too dinky, twee and delicate for me.  Spaniels and beagles are about the smallest dog I can cope with.  I think I'd be much happier with a staffie or a rottweiler.  I used to get very hurt when people crossed the road to avoid Gordon, my scarred, one-eyed shar pei - how could they not see how beautiful he was?  My dustbuster, however, is perfect for me.  It is blue, which is my favourite colour.  It also does exactly what it says on the box - it gets to the dust.  The sofa cushions are fixed and really hard to clean between - until the dustbuster came along.  The stairs took a minute to be lint free.  Darcy worked out very quickly that the miniature cross-breed vacuum was going to be competition for the miniature cross-breed poodle.  When I use the dustbuster, she jumped up to the window and started barking.  I wasn't sure if she was calling out to passers-by for help or just trying to out-volume the vacuum.

Darcy had to wait for her evening walk whilst I vacuumed the stairs and the car.  I was almost tempted to take the dustbuster to the park with us, so loathe was I to part with it.   I am not particularly houseproud, but I am dustbuster proud.

I am really pleased that Darcy has already been adopted.  She is a very sweet little dog and deserved to be happy.  She is very loving and attentive, and I hope her new family appreciate what a lovely dog she is.  I was also very impressed with how much more effort The Dogs' Trust put into fostering dogs than the organisation that I fostered Gordon from - contact numbers, advice, assistance, a letter for a vet should she need medical attention, a bed, toys, support - so very different from the experience I had with Gordon.

The dustbuster was almost not so fortunate in finding a home.  It was hidden away on the bottom shelf of the shop, without even a display ticket to alert shoppers to its needs.  Bright Dysons and Vax wet and dry machines crowded it out, with their range of colours and attachments.  Prospective owners were drawn to their glitz and glamour, overlooking Dusty.  Admittedly, it doesn't wag its tail or roll on its back to have its tummy tickled when I come home .... but I think it just needs time.

Enough about you, let's talk about David Beckham

I don't understand why everyone in British sports has to measure their performance and successes by what David Beckham thinks.  I doubt that David Beckham understands it either, he may even be faintly embarrassed by it.  During the 2012 Olympics, the BBC had to delay interviewing a British medal winner so the person could be congratulated by Beckham.  A more modest man may not put himself first at a time like this.  This level of fawning is not healthy for anyone, particularly me as every time I witness it, my blood pressure goes up.

For the first time in nearly 50 years, England now has a national football team that can not only perform well at international level on the pitch, but aren't hampered by scandal, ego and a conflicting life as a fashion model off the pitch.  Yes, England women's national football team have reached the semi-finals of the 2015 world cup.  Imagine how it must feel for them?  If you had the opportunity to put a question to them, what would be in your top five?

The ladies have not had anywhere near the support their male counterparts regularly garner just for putting on designer suits.  Should one of our strikers in the men's national team get the ball into an actual goal, the nation celebrates.  I include myself in this apathy towards the women's team.  I have watched some of this world cup, but not much.  I shall however watch tonight's semi-final against Japan - my bandwagon has been ordered.

Even though I haven't watched every game, I still expect professional sports journalists to afford the women's team the respect due to their performance.  Yesterday evening I drove home from the beach listening to Radio 2's 'Drivetime' - because I am at that age when I leave a beach as the teenagers with their skinny bodies, dreadful music and blue alcohol arrive.  At the end of the show, a
reporter interviewed Jodie Taylor of the women's team about the team's progress in this world cup.

Taylor, like many of her team mates, plays in the USA, not here.  Male players only move to the USA when the lucrative offers stop coming in from Europe and the US team wants a higher profile and a few shirt sales.  Jodie Taylor went out to there early in her career with a scholarship for Oregon State University.  Why do we not have our own scholarships here for both men and women?  I wonder how much more a player like Harry Kane would have benefitted from a system like this rather than wandering around the second and third tier.  We don't develop our young players very well, regardless of gender.

The women's team have therefore done incredibly well given the lack of home funding and support, not to mention beating the host nation in the quarter finals.  Their progress, the games to date and the up-coming semi-final all provide rich pickings for any journalist interviewing them.  The BBC's Seth Bennet preferred to focus on other aspects of the game.  His third question to Jodie was 'how does it feel when you are getting tweets from the likes of David Beckham?'.   The women's team have reached the semi-final for the first time in their history.  The men's team haven't reached the semi-final since Italia 90.  Despite this, Bennett seemed to think a tweet from Beckham was more noteworthy than the games and goals in themselves.

Bennett ploughed on with his line of questioning 'is this beyond expectation for  you?'.  Bennett would have done well to read the Guardian's Bandwagon Guide prior to his interview (link here).  The team have come on in leaps and bounds since the current manager, Mark Sampson, took over 18 months ago.   He then asked Taylor if she considered that Great Britain having a team in the Olympics was crucial to the England women's team winning international championships.  So that's why our national men's team are so poor, we don't get to play in the Olympics.  It has little to do with being overpaid, few youth academies and too much of the Premiership profits going on wage bills for superannuated overseas players.

Taylor very diplomatically noted towards the end of the interview that the focus was to 'keep doing well in this world cup first and foremost', just in case Bennett had forgotten what the interview was about.  I hope that there was a lot more to the interview than that and Bennett's questions were more insightful but just very poorly edited, because after their achievement so far in this contest, if those were all the questions he could muster, women have a long way to go in sports before we can be treated on anywhere near the same level as men.