Looking after Leo

I’ve just spent a day looking after our one-year-old vizsla and, to be blunt, I have some sympathy with Michael Heseltine’s decision to strangle his mother’s alsatian. Not that my wife is out of town. Rather, I’ve just got a new job as director of the New Schools Network, a charity that helps groups set up free schools, and Caroline argued that because I’ll now be spending so much time away from home I am morally obliged to take on the lion’s share of dog duties before I start.

My responsibilities began with a walk in Gunnersbury Park. Now, to be fair, this isn’t a monumental chore. Gunnersbury Park is one of Acton’s hidden gems. Indeed, it’s so glorious that the people who live within a thousand-yard radius of it deny that they live in Acton and claim to be proud residents of ‘Gunnersbury’. Of course, no such place exists outside the imagination of estate agents, but if I lived nearby I’d make the same boast.