TRADITIONAL BRITISH SPORTS

Ideas, as well as the language that expresses them, can become down-graded by usage. Take the idea of grooming - taking great care of a well-loved horse, or, if you are wealthy enough, employing a servant to do it for you, as in Stubbs's painting celebrating such a gentlemanly interest. And now it has become a furtive activity performed by the sexually frustrated under cover of the internet, to seduce young girls who think they understand the modern world, but are foolish enough to believe what they see on the screen. Often the consequences are saddening, or even tragic.

Or stalking. Why anyone should want to crawl about on a damp bleak moorland in order to observe, or photograph, much less kill, a stag is a puzzle in itself. But it was, even perhaps including the matter of slaughter, an undoubtedly gentlemanly occupation; engaged in by the heir to the throne, no less. Now it has come to mean hanging about on street corners with intent, or worse; with the intention of establishing a relationship which is doomed from the start.

These are aspects of a grey and sleazy world which hides behind techno-glitter to deceive itself into believing that it is engaged in the pursuit of happiness.

And yet - Morecambe & Wise sang of stalking avant la lettre - "You walk fast, I'll walk faster; I'll stick close, like piece of plaster; Get my kicks, following you around", and no-one thought them any the worse for it. But then, those were the days when two men could share a bed, and all you waited for was the ice-cream van gag, or talk of Ada Bailey. How naive we were.