Actually, I don't much like men with over bulging muscles and cauliflower ears, but it isn't my business to interfere with them doing what they do well.

What's been getting me is the defenders of so many GB and NI medallists coming from private education claiming that it's nothing to do with facilities (Olympic standard rowing lake!) but all to do with state schools abandoning the very necessary encouragment of competiveness.

Which teaches most people that they are losers, and makes "striving for excellence" utterly soul destroying. The few at the front, who have a chance of beating the one whom everyone knows is going to win, maybe it's good for them, but not the rest.

(Aged 11, I pulled a muscle at the top of my leg which bothered me for years, in a race I had chosen not to enter, and was told I couldn't possibly have because I came in last. Which I had expected, but done my darndest not to. Did the stupid woman think I wasn't trying when she deliberately set me up to fail?)

(My sister says I shouldn't remember these old things - but I think it made me better at dealing with most of the children in PE.)

Penny