It was hardly the river of no return

“Let’s do an Apocalypse Now,” said my friend. “Let’s head along the murderous Severn and see what we find.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bring the camouflage, you pack the Napalm.”

The plan was to go away for the weekend and see where the road took us. We’d head out along the Severn, possibly meander up the Wye and rock up somewhere for the night.

There was indeed much meandering, along with a fair bit of mooching — and a couple of U-turns (it turns out it’s possible to go the wrong way even if you’re not actually going anywhere in particular).

So by mid afternoon, we’d only made it as far as Lydney.

“This pub looks all right, let’s stop here for a bit,” I said.

“Never get out of the boat, unless you’re going all the way,” said my friend.

“It’s not a boat, it’s a Volkswagen Polo,” I said. The light and space of Newnam on Severn (‘Nam’) had really put the zap on his head.

We headed into the pub and a brief chat with the natives confirmed what we had suspected — there was no chance of getting anything to eat at that time in the afternoon.

So a couple of drinks and two packets of pork scratchings (most of which were eagerly consumed by our four-legged companion) later, it was time to head deeper into the jungle and see if we could get to Chepstow and find a room for two adults and a dog before nightfall. And somewhere to get some food on a Saturday night that would be quiet enough and welcoming enough for a fidgety hound.

“Or we could just head home, light the fire and crack open a bottle of wine,” I said.

“Oooh, that sounds good,” said my friend.

“Oooh, yeah — cosy,” I said.

And that’s when I realised I was getting old.

I skived off my own weekend away in favour of a comfy sofa, a roaring fire, a cheap bottle of plonk and a movie (Apocalypse Now, of course). And it was delightful.

I think I’m going to like getting old. Anyone seen my slippers?

How about a little DIY?

SO Bake Off champ Nadiya Hussain has written a book. A novel, to be precise. A work of fiction. A story hewn from one’s own imagination containing prose of one’s own creation.

Or not, in this case. Nadiya’s novel is ghost written. So somebody else wrote a work of fiction and Nadiya put her name on the cover.

I just can’t get my head round how this works. An autobiography being ghost written makes sense — I’ve had an amazing life, I want to tell my story but I’m rubbish at writing sentences so I’ll just say it out loud to someone who can sort out the written end of things.

But a novel? Did she have an idea and somebody else wrote a work of art based on that concept? Or did someone give her the idea and she wrote out some nice sentences to tell that story?

I was ranting to a friend about it the other day, who confessed “I won the 100m at the Olympics — somebody called Usain Bolt ghost ran it for me.”

Nadiya is clearly a hugely talented cook — so why does she need to do something which she presumably isn’t good enough to do on her own?

If writing fiction isn’t your bag then don’t bother with it.

I’m rubbish at art so I would never go out, point at a piece of scenery and get someone who is good at art to paint it for me so I could then scribble my signature in the corner.

Getting someone else to do something for you does not count as doing it yourself.

I didn’t write this column, by the way.

The trolls are out again

A MUSICIAN pal of mine has recently incurred the wrath of internet trolls.

He shared the petition calling for Donald Trump’s state visit to be called off on Facebook and his American fanbase went wild.

Many of them said they appreciated the show of support from across the Pond but a number of them ripped into him furiously, threatening to stop buying his records and demanding he stay out of politics.

It’s an experience sadly familiar to us journalists these days. You only have to look at the Adver website and you will see that the comments sections often descend into squabbles and insults.

The pal and I went to a birds of prey centre a few months back and as we left we looked at the visitors’ book. It was full of gushingly nice comments — best day ever, thank you so much, a wonderful experience, keep up the good work... all that kind of thing.

My pal said: “If this were an online visitors’ book, they’d be calling each other every name under the sun by now and slagging off the birds of prey and saying they were rubbish and couldn’t fly if they wanted to and it’s all the fault of the Muslims/gays/insert ignorant, unpleasant insult here.”

Wouldn’t it be great if people behaved online the way they would in real life?

And anyone who really needs to be a troll can go and live under a bridge and bother the billy goats instead.