DOMINIC Cummings, Boris’s special adviser, faced the media in the Downing Street Rose Garden. They didn’t lay a glove on him.

Laura K (BBC) and Beth Rigby (Sky) both over-emoted. Peston (ITV) was his usual bumbling, prolix and barely intelligible self. Only Gary Gibbon (C4) came close to forensic questioning.

So Cummings lives on, reprising what he told the scrum of hacks and snappers, themselves clearly not socially distanced, when they doorsteppped him two days earlier. “It doesn’t matter what you think!” implying perhaps that it was the prerogative of the people to judge rather than the media.

Certainly, it’s for hacks to winkle out information by spotting flaws in a version of events. This they singularly failed to do, instead relying on the lazy journalism of channelling the “people’s” anger. Nonetheless, if there was a snap general election how much of the government’s 80 seat majority would be whittled away? But there won’t be another election for years and a week is a long time in politics. Boris must hope that he can get the wheels back on.

Apparently, the police have visited DC to interview him. Should he be fined? Absolutely - if only for the insult to public decency occasioned by his ridiculous woolly hat. Cummings fails the first of the two rules from that exemplar employer Sir John Timpson who says his staff at his key cutting and shoe repair shops should, “Look the part” and “Put the money in the till!” No new career beckons for DC at TImpsons.

Meanwhile virus infection rates and deaths continue to fall which has to be good news - not that you’d know it from the BBC which reports the latest 24 hours deaths and then gives us the grand total. How is that helpful in telling people how things are going? More lazy journalism. What about something more informative such as the rate of decline. Is it going up or down?

Back in the Hampshire we must turn our attention to wine. Our vineyards are giving more established growers in Sussex a run for their money - none more so than Hattingley Valley near Alresford. Under the guidance of their founder, Simon Robinson, they’ve been sweeping the board in international competitions. Hattingley’s fizz has beaten several French champagnes in blind tastings and is now featured in British Airways First Class – not that there’ll have been much drunk there recently. They’ve lost most other traditional markets too so they’re enticing the bibulous direct with a 40 per cent off sale. Fill your boots!

An unexpected victim of Corona has been the charity box - lifeline for so many voluntary organisations. In our St Mary Bourne shop, as in so many, there are half a dozen by the till including boxes for my beloved Naomi House and Enham Trust. In normal times they quickly fill with shrapnel change - each box, when full, averaging around £30. With Corona we’re encouraged to pay by card, so no change for an already beleaguered charitable sector.

On a more uplifting note my bees are going gangbusters in the warm sunshine and it was a pleasure to take, suitably distanced, my keen, four year old grandson, X, resplendent in his new bee suit, to visit the hives close up. The ability of youngsters to absorb facts is awe inspiring. Now he’s full of it, telling anyone who’ll listen about the inner workings of the bee world.

Finally, from up the valley at Hurstbourne Tarrant, a curious tribute to the NHS. At least I think it’s a tribute. Despite the “I love NHS” sticker, it could be seen differently.