2 1GT Tuesday July 21 2020 | the times

times

park of an Essex motorway service

station at 5.30 on a Sunday morning

as youths wheelspun hot hatches

for bored girlfriends and I sat and

tried not to look like a drug dealer.

A van laden with dogs finally appeared

three hours late; a driver who spoke

no English confirmed my identity

and after several attempts managed

to get Carina into my car. She was

so traumatised and exhausted that

when I got home I had to carry her

into the house.

BigDog and Alfie, our other dogs,

sniffed her and engaged in a gentle

nose boop, but were basically bemused

by this new arrival. I looked at the

stinking brown and white collie

cowering on my doormat and

wondered what I had just done.

She had never been in a house. She

lasted 24 hours before she escaped

from ours.

I had a long-standing arrangement

to have dinner with the American

novelist Ann Patchett in London that

night, which I could not cancel. I left

detailed dog-related instructions and

set off. At 8am the next morning my

husband called to say that Carina had

slipped the lead on her first walk. I

think I actually howled.

There is a particular kind of despair

that comes with losing a foreign

rescue dog who has no idea where

home even is. In that first 24 hours we

walked miles across country, alerted

local farmers (she can look worryingly

Maths all

day? Time

for a sickie

still observing social

distancing rules.

The timetable will

be rejigged to offer

pupils one lesson

in one subject in one

classroom each day.

No mingling in

echoing corridors while

shuffling from history

to chemistry. No hot-

desking. No back and

forth from one block

to another, shaving a

crafty three minutes

off the second slot with

some quality loitering.

No, just a solid five

hours of geometry or

grammar or groundnut

growing in Gabon,

or whatever it is

the syllabus offers

these days. Smart

thinking, eh?

Well, yes and no. The

scheme may be good

for keeping the pesky

R rate under control,

but I can’t imagine a

bunch of 14-year-olds

concentrating on

anything for five hours

straight, outside of

Love Island or Grand

Theft Auto. Also, if

you know it’s maths

the whole of Tuesday,

isn’t that an excellent

incentive to fake a

sneeze and sack the

whole day off?

Manor High secondary

school in Oadby,

Leicestershire is

planning a novel

way of opening up

in September while

T

he third week in

July and, regular

as clockwork, open

season on blokes at the

beach begins. Poor old

David Cameron in his

wetsuit in Cornwall is

still a few weeks away,

ditto Boris Johnson looking immense

in his baggy scoutmaster shorts — but

meanwhile, let’s all have a laugh at

Mark Zuckerberg. Not so much at his

physique, but his face, specifically his

diligent application of sunscreen while

surfing on hols in the large part of

Hawaii he owns.

Zuckerberg, giggles Twitter, looks

like that fella from

what someone of

my generation still

thinks of as the

new Star Trek.

Or the Joker. Or

that unfunny

French mime

artist. And so on.

Coincidentally,

on my own

holiday in France

as I am, I saw

a French mime

artist just the

other night. And

yes, his face was

caked in white

make-up and yes, he looked a bit like

Zuckerberg on his board. And yes, he

was also spectacularly unfunny.

To the Brits, Dutch and Scandis in

the audience, at any rate. The locals

laughed fit to burst, their masques

obligatoires pulsing with mirth. That

chuckling crowd was every bit as

chuffed as a pile-on mob laying into

some poor celebrity who has taken his

top off and doesn’t look like an extra

from 300.

It’s actually getting silly. That

chap Jason Hard to Pronounce His

Surname Momoa, who to my eye

looks pretty damn impressive, recently

got slated, having been pictured

lacking his trademark Aquaman abs.

Even without this professionally

acquired six-pack, Momoa remains

a strikingly fine figure of a man. Yet

he has been hit with the dread term

“dad bod”, lobbed from behind the

barricade of social media anonymity.

The people

know best,

Mr West

I hesitate to write this,

given that utter clowns

getting elected to high

public office has

become the norm in

recent years, but I

reckon Kanye West

is in for a shock if he

persists with his bid

for the US presidency.

I wouldn’t want to

compare myself to

a global superstar

married to another

global superstar with

an unlikely looking

arse, but back in sixth

form I enjoyed a

certain level of

notoriety. A notoriety

that I managed to

confuse with

popularity, which is

why when an election

was held at the end of

the lower sixth year

for head boy and girl

for the next academic

year, I put myself

forward.

From an electorate

of more than 300 (it

was a big school) I

received precisely three

votes, one of which was

my own. (I’m not sure

who cast the other two,

but cheers anyway.)

Fact is, I’d have made

a disastrous head boy,

and everyone bar me

and two other people

could see that.

The experience

taught me a valuable

lesson: contrary to

received wisdom, the

great unwashed are

very far from stupid.

West is about to find

that out for himself.

Now Zac Efron, still only 32 and still

in magnificent nick, yet having also

mislaid his abdominal ridges, has got

the same dad-bod treatment. And

young Zac isn’t even a dad yet, as far

as I’m aware.

Efron found it necessary to remove

his shirt in a new Netflix documentary,

but rather than getting the respect

that his admirably toned torso

merited, he has instead copped a load

of abuse about losing the washboard

stomach that made him famous.

Weird. It’s getting so bad, readers,

that these dad-bod slights are even

occasionally levelled at your

columnist! Hard to believe, I know.

Robert Crampton

I once had a six-pack for

a few hours. Having a

dad bod is much better

After a 58kg

I

n May 2019 the screenwriter

Sarah Phelps posted on Twitter

a picture of the saddest dog I

had ever seen, a six-year-old

collie who had spent her whole

life in a small, concrete Bosnian

pound. I’m not generally one for

anthropomorphism, but this dog

looked despairing, as if all hope was

gone. Perhaps I was projecting. My

personal life was a mess, a close family

member was seriously ill, and for the

first time in my life I was struggling

with depression. Well, I thought, if

this is going to be a bin fire of a year,

I might as well do one good thing.

I applied to adopt her.

Carina, as she was then known,

came through Save Suffering Strays,

a tiny charity in Sarajevo. I was talked

through what to expect; some pound

dogs adapt immediately, others never

do. She wasn’t housetrained and was

fearful of humans, but she was good

with other animals. Video footage

shows her cowering from a tiny cat

held by a veterinarian. But we had

already adopted various animals,

including BigDog, a now 11-year-old,

58kg Pyrenean mountain dog, and

turned her life around. We know dogs,

I thought. We can do this.

The charity’s dogs are brought

across Europe in an adapted van, and

adoptee owners are given a 48-hour

slot in which to meet them at an

agreed pick-up spot. This is how last

September I ended up in the car

COVER AND BELOW: BRONAC MCNEILL FOR THE TIMES, DAVID YEO FOR THE TIMES

When the author Jojo Moyes took

on Sisu, a rescue dog with the canine

equivalent of OCD, she had no idea

what she was letting herself in for

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And hard to bear, personally, if I may

say so. I’m considering therapy.

Then again, women have suffered

this sort of judgmentalism for

centuries, so I suppose it’s only fair

that having dished it out for so long,

we blokes are now measured by

similarly impossible standards.

I had a six-pack once, or certainly

the suggestion of one, about a decade

ago, and I’m here to tell you that

the risible level of body fat required

is not sustainable. Not if you want

to eat or drink anything above and

beyond absolutely bugger all, at any

rate. My six-pack lasted a matter of

hours before going back into hiding

after a much-needed glass of water. It

has proved elusive ever since. I don’t

miss it. Neither should Zac or Jason

miss theirs.

A ripped Zac Efron four years ago

and, right, today, with his “dad bod”