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?

You can't do anything these days.

If you want to wear Christmas decorations while helping school children 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. It's true. 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 stormed red faced towards the departure lounge immediately 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 is 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 biopic?

I don't want to sound arrogant or risk entering into a duel with a fellow journalist, but I must admit to being slightly perplexed at the attitude of Mail columnist Liz Jones towards the countryside.

Each Sunday I pore over her terrific articles in the Sunday Mail's You magazine (having already read the sport section naturally) and I regularly debate her musings about the world with my better half often with hilarious results.

Sadly, I met her latest submission with a dose of eye rolling.

Liz had, after careful consideration, decided to leave her friends and lodgings in the big city and escape with her numerous cats to enjoy the pleasures of the countryside.

Nothing wrong with that, having done this myself I know it takes time to adjust to not hearing police sirens at 3am and having to drive behind tractors more than once a year, so I was with her all the way. That is until she described her new pile in Exmoor.

"The house was filthy, and freezing. The Aga wasn't working and they had taken the fridge, the washing machine and the butler's sink, all the light fittings and even the log baskets."

It got worse, much worse.

"The fields – my fields, all 46 acres of them – were full of sheep (I don't agree with sheep farming), and the stables full of old bits of furniture, rotting bales of straw and pieces of wire. I then got a call from the removal men saying they couldn't get the big truck up my lane."

Cripes! Did Liz buy this house in exchange for a cow on the way to Pimlico station?

And her empty house, well it's like a crime wave!

Did the urchins from the village undertake a dawn raid on the property to relieve it of its fixtures and fittings to anger the new girl?

No doubt one of her housewarming gifts will be stolen from its plinth quicker than you can say 'the dish will run away with the spoon' too!

How is she going to cope when the bearded serving wench at the White Hart isn't wearing Vera Wang, and more importantly for her livelihood now that she is 1,000,000 miles from civilsation, how is she going to submit her copy from now on? Telegram or carrier pigeon?

Despite having swirled around the house in disbelief I calmed sufficiently to allow Liz to conclude….

"I switched off my mobile and looked out at the inky sky. I can't believe I left my immaculate Georgian house for this dump. I have never felt more scared, or more alone, in my life. Things can only get better."

Yes, that's right, it's the countryside's fault that she didn't come prepared.

Wait until she finds out the local post office has just been boarded up and the only blackberries are the ones they put in pies for the church fete!