I am a Welsh man, and my name is Gwyn. Gwyn is a Welsh man’s name. It means white, blond or godlike. I am white and blond. The female versions of Gwyn are Gwyneth and Gwen. Most English people cannot comprehend this.

In 1962 I was 15, gangly, astoundingly shy, massively embarrassed by life and living. I was on holiday in France with my French exchange student friend who was four months older than me, cooler than the other side of my pillow, wildly sophisticated and rich beyond belief. We were sitting on the beach outside his villa, Jean-Loup evenly tanned, me pink and blotchy, when the three most achingly beautiful girls I have ever seen sauntered up. “Salut, Jean-Loup,” they smiled, “is this your friend from England?” (Most Europeans class Wales, Scotland and Ireland as England). I was blushing scarlet, never before having spoken to a girl who wasn’t my sister. “Oui,” answered Jean-Loup nonchalantly, “tell zem your name.”

“Je m’appelle Gwyn,” I stammered.

I have never seen such a reaction. The girls collapsed on the sand in a tangle of long bronzed limbs, screaming — no, weeping with laughter, tumbles of blonde and black hair, flashing white teeth, fists pounding the sand in an effort to catch their breath, bubbling on the verge of hysterics. Jean-Loup had joined in as well. They were all helpless with laughter. I sat there in total confusion, not knowing whether to join in, not knowing what I’d said, not knowing what was funny, but breaking the world’s blushing record.

It was explained to me later. ‘Gwyn’ sounds very like the French word ‘Gouine’. ‘Gouine’ means dyke or lesbian. Nothing could have been funnier to a fifteen-year-old girl. I didn’t know what a dyke or lesbian was.

But from that day forward I preferred to be known as ‘Bob’ in France.

I’m going to do some more walking, in an attempt to shift the seven kilos I larded on straight after I had the Zoladex implant, and to regain some of my energy after the trials of the past few months.

I’ve never read the Stieg Larsson trilogy, but I listened to it all the way through on audiobooks as I walked Milo in the mornings a few years back.

So I was wondering what I could listen to now; something long and immersive to carry me through the many, many steps my spiffy new iPhone will be counting for me. Everyone says 10,000 steps a day, but that’s one size fits all, a figure plucked out of the air, applying to everyone and no one.

It hit me this morning. In between my usual reading diet of Lee Child, Robert Paterson and Dan Brown, I find I enjoy the odd longer book — Les Misérables (only the Christine Donougher translation will do); War and Peace; Remembrance of Things Past — that’s it! A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. In French, of course. I’d never have the ability or patience to read it in the original language, but why not let it flow through my ears as I trudge along the Parkland Walk shouting at Milo?

Much of it would be incomprehensible to me, but it’s never a hardship to listen to French being spoken, and having read the Scott Moncrieff translation I should be able to get the gist of it.

So I reasoned there must be an audiobook, and there is. What’s more, it’s FREE! All 145 hours of it. Here’s a link for you to download it. Actually, it is a little intimidating as I’m not going to be walking by myself all the time and it’s rude to listen to an audiobook while walking with Von. At least I think it is. And where does one find a spare 145 hours?

This is going to take me a while to get through. I might have to take a break or two with something lighter, but I know I will get through it in the end. I always do. And I myself will be lighter too, I hope.

I’m rather looking forward to it.

Not of the UK, obviously, that’s beyond even my awesome powers.

But Pakistan, now that would have been a doddle.

The Panama Papers revealed that three of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s children were listed as beneficiaries for three offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The documents showed these BVI companies were involved in a 2007 loan of $13.8m, using Sharif-owned properties in the UK as collateral.

Sharif was trying to claim that neither he nor his family profited from his political position. His daughter and heir apparent Maryam Nawaz produced documents dating from 2006 that proved her father’s innocence.

Unfortunately what these naughty people did was to have the documents set in Calibri, a font that wasn’t available until 2007. The designer of Calibri, Lucas De Groot, said that there was ‘absolutely zero chance’ that the Sharif documents weren’t forgeries.

While the clan Sharif were preparing their fraudulent defence all they needed to have done was to have checked my 2005 tome The Encyclopaedia of Fonts. In it they would not have found Calibri — because it didn’t exist at the time.

These paragons of politics invested their tax-haven loot in one of the safest havens known to mankind: empty apartments in Kensington & Chelsea. Thinking of the homeless from the Grenfell hecatomb, one word springs to mind — Requisition.

And the sooner the better.

Nevertheless it makes me laugh to know that Pakistan is now Sans Sharif, ho ho ho.

Calibri compared to Arial and Helvetica

Hot flushes are unfair to women. Most women suffer from hot flushes during menopause, and they suffer silently and stoically. Hormone replacement therapy can be effective in reducing them, but there are concerns over the side effects. Scientists can’t explain them; they seems to have no function other than reminding the sufferer that her days of fertility are over. The problem is there aren’t that many old women scientists. Most scientists are young women or men, groups who are generally untroubled by hot flushes. There’s no interest in looking into the complaint. So middle-aged women get hot flushes — so what? It’s not fatal, painful or contagious. It will pass in time. It gets ignored.

Well, I’m a middle-aged man, and I am getting hot flushes, and I’m not happy. For those who haven’t experienced them, hot flushes start with a gentle rise in temperature, as if some has turned up the central heating. By the time one becomes aware the temperature has risen, the sweats have broken out; in my case firstly the forehead, then the back of the neck, then the torso. The legs are relatively unaffected. Beads of sweat roll down my nose before plopping onto my Mac trackpad, which doesn’t approve of moisture. I am surrounded by tissues — on the keyboard, mopping my brow and the back of my neck, by my side. The heavy sweating stops after about five or six minutes — my shirt is wringing wet and my hair is plastered to my head — then the temperature rebalances itself. In my case, it rebalances by plunging way below normal and I find myself shivering with cold. The whole episode lasts perhaps ten minutes. It then comes back in about half an hour and the whole procedure is repeated. It’s no fun, although I don’t get the rapid heartbeat endured by many sufferers. I kept a note of one day about a fortnight ago, and I enjoyed 35 hot flushes throughout the day. At night I sleep on one pillow, then flip it over about a quarter way through the night, then at half time swap my sodden bolster for a cool fresh one, flip that one over later and soon it’s time to get up.

Now I understand why ladies of a certain age are so adept with fans. Self-absorbed men place a coquettish interpretation on the language of the fan, which merely means “Piss off and leave me alone, can’t you see I’m sweating like a bloody pig?” A hand fan certainly helps; Von has unearthed two, which I employ every hour. It’s strange that moving air is cooler than static air. As far as I’m aware, women tend not to talk about their hot flushes; perhaps quietly among themselves, but I’m not privy to that.

If you remember the old Tuborg beer ads, you know, the portly gentleman mopping his brow leaning against a stile — Den durstige Mann — that’s just how it feels.

Because this happens to a group of people who tend to be more reticent than most, little is heard about it. A few strident women may have spoken out, but then nobody listens to a strident woman. I’ve checked the subject out on Wikipedia but all it tells me is that science doesn’t know the cause: “The exact cause and pathogenesis has not yet been fully studied.”

There’s no help in religion either — there are no mentions of hot flushes in the Bible, the Talmud or the Koran, presumably because they were written by men. Well I’m a man, and I’m getting hot flushes, and I want something done about it. I know that for me it will all be over by the autumn, because my hot flushes are medically induced. I have had two Zolodex implants preparatory to a course of radiotherapy this summer, and one of the side effects I was pre-warned about was hot flushes. I cannot think of any drug-induced side effect that has had such an dramatic effect on my life. I know it’s only temporary, but I can think of little else.

Thirty or more a day, on average. Fewer at night; say four waking me up between midnight and 08:00. The rest seem to come every half hour to forty minutes.

The nicest thing anyone ever said to me was “You’re cooler than the other side of my pillow!” which set me on the hunt for a cooling pillow. There was a British company called Chillow that sold cool pillows, but on their website this now appears:

Soothsoft Ltd and The Personal Cooling Centre has closed down.
Thank you to all our customers for your support over the years.
If you are looking for a Chillow we are sorry to Inform you that the manufacturer has stopped making this product due to the many fakes now on the Internet from China.
Please be aware that Chillow copies are of poor quality and do not work effectively.

So I just mop my brow and carry on. It will be over in a few months for me. Women have to put up with it for fifteen or more years.

Not fair.

I am very aware that I have led a charmed and privileged life. I’ve had all the good fortune that life could throw at one — apart from money, of course, I’ve never had any of that — but everything else has slotted happily into place.

Here’s an example. In the early ’70s I was sharing a cottage in Lindfield, Sussex with my old mate Evan Seys and commuting to St James’s Place in London every day. I was woken early one morning by a banging and scratching at my window. Drawing the curtain, I was confronted by a huge bird standing on the windowsill and pecking at the panes. It was like a giant blue magpie with a fancy great tail. Evan came into my room. “What the hell is that?” There was no camera available so I attempted to draw it.

There was no internet in those days, so I couldn’t search and identify it. I had the standard Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, by Roger Tory Peterson, Guy Mountfort and P. A. D. Hollom, but of course it wasn’t in the book. It couldn’t have been a European bird; it must have escaped from an aviary.

I took my drawing into work and Eric Major, our PR manager, was in the next office having a meeting with two men. There were photographs of birds all over the desk. I walked in, showed them my crude drawing and asked “Do you know what this is?”

Mountfort and Hollom, two-thirds of the authors of the Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, scratched their heads and agreed it was an Occipital Blue Pie, a bird of the magpie family from the Himalayas. It was unlikely to have flown to Haywards Heath from Kathmandu; it was clearly an escapee from an ornamental aviary.

At The Crocodile at Daneshill that evening Evan asked if I’d found out anything about the bird. “It’s an Occipital Blue Pie,” I answered. “Guy Mountfort and Philip Hollom confirmed it.” “Fine,” said Evan.

Neither of us were remotely surprised that two of Britain’s leading ornithologists had just happened to be in the next office to mine that morning.

So we had another pint.

Life’s been like that.

And now the Liszt Collection has uploaded an engraving of the Occipital Blue Pie to fotoLibra, and here it is, with fotoLibra watermark. Quite a thing to find on your windowsill at the crack of dawn. That’s what has inspired this little reminiscence.

Occipital Blue Pie, © The Liszt Collection / fotoLibra

Dubai has just announced the launch of ‘Dubai Font’, developed by Microsoft. The font was designed with both Latin and Arabic scripts and is available to Office 365 users.

“It is the first font to be developed by a city and to carry its name,” claimed council secretary general Abdulla al-Shaiban, which is true if the most important part of the sentence is the ‘and’.

Well, this new font is featureless, like a desert. So I suppose it’s apt.

I was interviewed on Radio Wales yesterday about it. I said it was vanilla, unnoticeable. Which in a text face is a desirable characteristic.

But designed by Microsoft? If I wanted a font designed, I’d go to a font designer, not a software company. If you wanted a racing car designed, would you go to Ferrari, or Facebook?

And a first? Hardly. Loads of cities have typographical identities, but not all of them have authorities who can impose their demands. All corporations have graphic identities, some more forceful than others.

If you’re going to associate a font with a city, you might at least give it some character. Look at London — as soon as you see that font with little diamonds instead of dots on the top on the ‘i’s, it says London. That’s because London Transport commissioned Johnston’s Railway Type a hundred years ago, and that went on to inspire Gill Sans, one of the greatest C20 fonts and one which was created in Wales at Capel-y-Ffin.

Spot the difference. When Microsoft created Windows they wanted to use Helvetica but they didn’t like the thought of paying royalties. Like taxes, royalties are what they receive, not what they pay out. So they went to Monotype and commissioned something that would look as much like Helvetica as possible without infringing its copyright. They called it Arial.

DAR BELARJ

Earlier this year Dar Belarj in Marrakesh was showing examples of type families to represent the Latin, Arabic and Tifinagh alphabets. They are uniformly frightful, though crafted with the best intentions. The Latin alphabet and the Arabic alphabet are so alien to each other that any attempt to make them familial is worthy but hopeless. Arabic reads right to left for a start.

No one is going to use these fonts seriously unless they are compelled to. In Dubai Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed al-Maktoum has urged all government institutions to adopt the font in official correspondence.

How strong is ‘urged’?

Australian property developer Lendlease has been confirmed as the preferred partner for the Haringey Development Vehicle, on the promise of thousands of new homes and jobs to be created across the borough.

Haringey and Lendlease are discussing how the regeneration partnership will operate and be managed, before a final decision on whether to proceed is made by the council in the summer.

Cllr Alan Strickland, Haringey Council Cabinet Member for Housing, Regeneration and Planning said, “Confirming Lendlease as our preferred partner is a major step forward for our plans to deliver homes, jobs and opportunities for local people. A 50:50 partnership approach means we stay in control over how council land is developed while sharing the profits, which can go back into further regeneration, affordable housing and funding the services we provide to residents. We now look forward to working with Lendlease over the coming months to work out the details of the partnership.”

Well this all sounds great, but there’s no black without white, no night without day, no profit without loss. Haringey will be sharing the profits; will it also be sharing the losses?

The reason businesses get as big as Lendlease is not because they’re pleasant fellows to have a beer with; it’s because they’re deadly dealmakers who are tasked with doing everything they can to maximise shareholder value at the expense of everything and everyone with whom they have dealings. They are not charities or public authorities, they are in business to make as much money as they can. And because it’s their money, not a penny is wasted or unaccounted for.

Contrast that with the sedate life of an outer London council, confident in the knowledge that they’ll wake up on New Year’s Day with another £210 million of other people’s money safely banked without having to lift a finger.

Can I ask Cllr Strickland, a pleasant-looking young man whose day job is working for a charity, to ensure in his negotiations with the Australian behemoth that
a) the contract is with the holding company of Lendlease, not a quickly invented subsidiary company which will have to pay fees and royalties to another entity in the group
b) that auditors appointed by Haringey calculate the (hopeful) profits, rather than Lendlease people, who may be tempted to include expenses over and above what any ordinary human being could imagine.

My concern is that any profits created will be dissipated by fees, charges, expenses, royalties, contingencies and the thousand other nooks and crannies into which big businesses stuff their excess cash. When it comes to sharing out the pot, I fear there will be pitifully little in it for Haringey and its residents.

Why do I keep thinking of Barnet FC playing Barcelona?

To St. Margaret’s Westminster for the service of remembrance for Tony Snowdon. It was a glorious morning and the church was packed — I’d say about 1,200 people. We bellowed our way through ‘Cwm Rhondda’ and Bryn Terfel sang ‘Ar Hyd Y Nôs’ to harp accompaniment. It was a service as good as it gets. Son David gave a most moving address — he said most people don’t get the chance to grow up with their hero. The Queen and Prince Philip walked past me within touching distance. Will was there without Kate. I knew no one.
Tony had a lot of friends. He was kind, funny, talented and convivial. I don’t normally like to find myself in the same location as Kate Adie (for my US friends, she is the BBC’s most famous war correspondent), but this was the exception — a luncheon Tony gave in the Oliver Messel room at the Dorchester for fourteen friends.

About ten days ago my email inbox suddenly filled up with hundreds of bounce-backs, or rejected emails.

Now I can handle rejection as I’ve had a lot of experience with it, but it’s harder to take when I didn’t send the emails in the first place.

Some persons, and I can’t include my usual jingoistic, racist or offensive slurs here because I haven’t a clue who they might be, spoofed my email address to make it look as if it was me offering Online Medical Isurance. Clearly English wasn’t their first language, neither did they trouble with the services of a spell-checker. The emails were sent from “‘ivana leoni’ <gwyn.headley@fotoLibra.com>”

When the name of the sender bears no relationship whatsoever to the email address, my suspicions are roused. And I’m seldom wrong. It’s a cheap scam, and I can’t see many people falling for it. I know they’ll get me in the end, because as I get older and stupider, they will be getting younger and smarter, and soon they will suss that organisations like HMRC take care to spell their emails correctly.

All this is par for the course in our new, exciting digital world, and I would have passed this off as hardly worthy of comment, were it not for one debilitating outcome: since the spoof I have been unable to send any emails. My Mail client refuses to recognise my (valid) password. It’s been ten days now, and frankly I’m fed up. I have tried everything I can think of, and nothing works.

I’ve placed it in the hands of my email provider — I can do no more — and hope that they will be able to magic up a solution. The only alternative is to delete all my email accounts, in the process losing access to my email archive, and open completely new accounts.

Too drastic a step. But some petty criminal will have driven me to do it, benefitting them not a jot.