Ones to watch

Back on political duty with CNN in election week, I came across a dead rat in Downing Street. It had to be an omen, but had the rodent been leaving or arriving when he met his fate, presumably in the jaws of the lean-looking fox who loped across the No. 10 doorstep shortly afterwards? Perhaps my furry ex-friend, too, had been misled by the polls but then we all have to make do with the best information we have available, as I did with our list of winter jumpers. After that heady summer of 2014, when our Twelve produced a profit of £171, I feared a setback and so there has been, but not on the Lib Dem scale. A tenner on the winter twelve every time they ran (choosing just one when two of our selections clashed) would have seen a profit of £19. Not enough, I concede, for a jolly dinner at Le Caprice, but sometimes one is more in the mood anyway for a curry and a large Cobra.