You can't do anything these days.

If you want to wear Christmas decorations to get school children in the mood as you help them to cross the road, health and safety rules forbid it.

If you want to show the football in your pub via a Greek satellite on a Saturday afternoon you can't because the Premier League would prefer you to pay £55 at the turnstiles.

Even more bizarrely, and something which my own father discovered while going through airport security in the summer, you cannot take a jar of mustard onto an aeroplane. The man with the shiny badge and big hat said something about an offensive weapon. I couldn't work out what he was saying amidst the arm waving, but I definitely heard my father mutter something about an 'oaf' as he slid red faced towards the departure lounge following the exchange.

Speaking of airports, it'll be interesting to see just what Gordon Brown means when he says security will be stepped up in 'sensitive locations' like airports and railway stations in the coming months.

Shooting Gazette contributor Roderick Emery has often said how puzzled he is at how easy one can transport a gun on a train compared to an aeroplane, but could this come to an end if baggage checks and metal detectors come into force?

Surely it will lead to the inconvenience the government has said it is trying to avoid, and in worse cases could misguided prejudice from people who might not take kindly to shooting mean that guns are left constantly sweating about getting their trains because of someone against fieldsports purposely holding them up?

On a lighter note, Liz Jones is fast becoming my Moriarty with her views on the countryside. Her latest offering about country folk in last week's You magazine caused me to gag on my Sunday roast with yet more misguided and ill-informed complaints.

The biggest whopper had to be when she said she was woken on a Sunday by 'the locals' shooting pheasants.

Shooting? Pheasants? Sunday? Isn't that illegal? Was Liz perhaps still on London time?

She does have some justification for feeling hard done by so far during her rural adventure. Aside from having to cope with the news that Ocado don't deliver in Exmoor, she has also had to start drinking tap water again for the first time in over 30 years – I wonder who'll end up playing her in the film about this adventure?