I enjoy the Winter Olympics, but what I’d really like is spring to come a bit sooner

Monday

I first became aware of the Winter Olympics back in 1964 when the BBC broadcast grainy black and white footage of Tony Nash and Robin Dixon surprising themselves and everyone else by winning the two-man bobsleigh gold in Innsbruck.

Ever since, the event has been a regular fixture in my TV calendar. Not so much for the occasional British successes, but because the Winter Olympics are the only sporting event I can watch without caring who wins. For all other sports, I need to create an emotional investment – however arbitrary, but for the Winter Olympics I can sit back and just enjoy the spectacle of athletes throwing themselves down mountains. Or up them. For some reason, this year I’ve become obsessed with the cross-country skiing. The only dampener has been Clare Balding’s obvious frustration at being forced to anchor from a studio in Britain. Is the Beeb so broke it can’t afford to send her to South Korea?

Tuesday

There are many times when I doubt my sanity. I got up at dawn to fly with two friends to Nice. Then we drove for three and a half hours to Turin to watch Spurs take on Juventus in the knockout stages of the Champions League. We arrived two hours early so the Italian police could virtually strip-search us in the freezing cold. We faced unmitigated disaster as Spurs went 2-0 down inside the first nine minutes. Thankfully, things picked up (2-2 at the final whistle) as the team played one of the finest 80 minutes of football in its history. That just left the journey back – after first being kept inside the stadium for 45 minutes just for the hell of it. We drove back to Nice in the snow, getting to the airport at 4am. We slept in the car for an hour and got the 7am flight back to London. I know I’m really far too old for this. But I also know that if Spurs do get through to the next round, I’ll almost certainly do it all over again.

Wednesday

Boris Johnson’s speech came pre-sold as his big pitch to unite the country behind a positive vision for Brexit. So you’d have thought the foreign secretary might have chosen a venue where he could attract as big an audience as possible. Instead, his team picked a room in the offices of the thinktank Policy Exchange that was so small only a handful of people could attend. The rest, including me, were left to watch it on TV. Perhaps, though, Johnson had an inkling that his speech wasn’t going to be quite as well received as he might have hoped. Having talked up the virtues of getting behind the government’s bold plan, he conspicuously failed to rule out the possibility of resigning from the cabinet to launch his own leadership campaign against Theresa May. He also cited dogging, stag dos to eastern Europe and sex tourism in Thailand as shining examples of how Britain wouldn’t be closing its doors on the rest of the world. Much more of this and it will be the rest of the world closing its doors on us.

Thursday

We’re now 56 days past the winter solstice. So we are now as far past the shortest day as we were before it when the clocks went back. Why then are we made to wait for well over an extra month before the clocks go forward again and we can all enjoy the lighter evenings? The long nights get to me. My mood is low, I feel anxious and depressed, and though the extra daylight has never been any guarantee of protection against mental illness, my worst episodes have always come between January and March. I am becoming better at muddling through my feelings of despair and futility. But it’s still a struggle. One improvement has come from a change in medication. I used to frequently wake up at 3am having an anxiety attack. Now I generally sleep through. Though the anxiety still breaks out in my dreams. Which are surreal, vivid, disturbing and exhausting. Though not as exhausting as not sleeping. Spring can’t come soon enough.

Friday

A new YouGov poll reveals that 48% of the country believe national service should be brought back, while only 36% oppose it. The breakdown shows only 10% of 18- to 24–year-olds think national service is a great idea while 62% are against it. Among those aged over 65 there are 74% in favour, while 18% are against. The age divide can only lead to two conclusions, neither of which reflects particularly well on the old. The first is that the overwhelming majority of parents and grandparents really hate their children and grandchildren and want them to suffer a bit. Or that the majority of parents and grandchildren think they have failed spectacularly to bring up their children in a decent way and think that a spell in the army is the only way to instil a proper sense of values and responsibility. Still, there is one small upside to this. Given that the thought of my children being conscripted for square-bashing fills me with horror, maybe I haven’t been an entirely useless parent.

Digested week, digested:
The Boris Love-Bomb bombs