Camelids are conservative, and frankly the llamas I keep in Derbyshire are rank Tories. Though I’ve shown Knapp, his wife Imp, and Ellie their new daughter, pictures of David Cameron and told them all about Compassionate Conservatism, their herd instinct, in evidence whenever we take them a tub of corn, remains “weakest to the wall!” And Knapp can be quite a bore on the West Lothian Question.

So I was surprised at what a hit Nick Clegg made with the llamas on a visit with his wife Miriam and children last year. The Liberal Democrat MP (and, now, likely contender for his party’s leadership) represents the constituency adjacent to what used to be mine, where I still live; we met through mutual friends; and though as a politician the Liberals were my great foes, and their best-of-both-worlds political cowardice regularly infuriates me, I think Mr Clegg personally impressive. The llamas, of course, were much struck by his fluent Spanish, but also by his informed critique of the Common Agricultural Policy.

And me? I don’t know how other columnists and commentators handle this, but I find the question of whether or how to separate friendship from commentary most uncomfortable. I don’t know the answers (except that I think it’s best we tell our readers) and it’s made trickier for me because Mr Clegg’s great rival is likely to be Chris Huhne. I’ve steered clear of discussing Mr Huhne with Mr Clegg, but like the party’s president, Simon Hughes, he triggers a wild, unreasoning, allergic reaction in me.

Awkward. So I guess that, professionally at least, I have to hope that Mr Clegg doesn’t become leader. Should that happen, I may have to upset the Clegg family (and my llamas) by describing a recurring daydream in which everyone else is eating with knives and forks, but Mr Clegg just keeps dipping rusks into a pale blue bowl of warm milk.

Despite being badly scarred by compulsory rugby at school, and never having mastered the rules, I was drawn into the final half-hour of the World Cup semi-final in Paris on Saturday night. It was riveting.

But what about the victory for France? In the national anthems contest, I mean. Our own dreary dirge (not, strictly speaking, the English national anthem anyway) was simply blown away by spine-tingling renditions of France’s wonderful La Marseillaise. It almost makes you want to be French.

I know, I know. Every few years, interspersed with why-oh-whys about the clocks going back, there’s a lively Times correspondence about whether (and for what) we should ditch “God Save Our Gracious Queen” – but maybe that’s because the clocks really shouldn’t go back, and we really should ditch our present national anthem, which is (as such) relatively recent (1745) with a tune that did double-duty as a forgettable Christmas carol. Though a doubtful royalist, I’ve no objection to the words, but, oh dear, that tune. It’s unsalvageable. I thought of this on Tuesday as from the radio I happened to catch the Jupiter movement from Gustav Holst’s The Planets, for which Sir Cecil Spring-Rice wrote the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country.

I know, I know. This too is a perennial suggestion in that perennial debate. But maybe that’s because Jupiter really is a glorious melody of tremendous dignity and power; and Spring-Rice’s words (even to me, an atheist) have real stature, progressing as they do to the thought (“And there’s another country . . .”) that patriotism is not enough, and ending with the beautiful “And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase/ And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace” – the more moving for having been written just after the Great War.

Could there be a point to this Downing Street website after all? Perhaps someone should get a petition going.

Incidentally, did you know that La Marseillaise can be sung entirely to the words pompe à vélo (bicycle pump), repeated over and again? Try it in your head: Pompe à vélo, pompe à vélo/ Pompe à vélo, pompe à vélo. . .

And before anyone accuses me of disrespect for a great nation, let me add that this was taught me by Frenchmen, on French territory (in the sub-Antarctic), on Bastille Day, in 2000.

Heavens – I’ve bought a tractor. A little red 1981 Massey Ferguson. I don’t know what came over my partner and me. Shaking fists against advancing age, other men buy sports cars, motor bikes or yachts. But we’re zooming up and down the drive on our new tractor. Bliss.

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