Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on England's enviable success, a great day for Wallace the mule and getting disembowelled for asking a question

'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?'

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Big day for Wallace

THE Government says that under new building regulations, every new house will soon be fitted with a charging point for electrical cars. That's it, just behind the wheelie bins and the pushchairs. Mind the cable - oops.

THERE is one word to describe Donald Trump's claim that Germany, by purchasing so much energy from Russia, is effectively a captive of the Kremlin. Correct. Rude, but still correct.

THIS will be a big week for Wallace the Mule as he becomes the first mule to compete at the highest level of competitions organised by British Dressage. As you may have read, Wallace, 11, was not allowed in competitions because he did not fit the official, discriminatory definition of a horse. But after a public outcry (how can anyone not support a campaign for an amiable old mule?), the rules were changed and he steps out at Gloucester on Saturday. I met a pair of mules at a country show a couple of years ago. I was expecting something donkey-sized but these were big, strong, handsome and intelligent creatures who seemed genuinely interested in people. My only fear is that offered a chance to compete in dressage which is a sort of slow-motion dance invented by horsey types, mules may be too clever to take it seriously.

A READER takes me to task for writing that Thomas Hardy "span" his stories. The past tense of spin is, of course, spun.

HOWEVER, "span"is the old, archaic form of spun and, if we discard it entirely, we can kiss goodbye to one of the most powerful rhymes in our history, a verse which goes back to the earliest stirrings of English democracy and the wild, revolutionary idea that all men - and women - are meant to be equal. It was spoken by the radical priest John Ball in 1381: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" For asking that question, Ball was hanged, disembowelled and chopped into pieces. These days he'd be banned from Twitter.

I SPENT much time as a child trying to persuade my parents that I was doing better in school tests than the figures suggested. Maybe that's why I look at the England result with nothing but envy. England came in the top four out of 32 competitors. I never got anywhere near that. Did you?

TIME changes everything and, before too long, we will realise that the biggest story of July 2018 was not the World Cup, nor Brexit nor even the miraculous rescue of the boys trapped in the Thai caves. It was peace breaking out in Eritrea, an event which got few headlines but will, with luck, transform the world's refugee crisis. The really important things in history tend to happen in places you can't even find on the map (top right corner of Africa, down a bit from Egypt, by the sea) .