Simon Barnes is the multi-award-winning chief sportswriter at The Times and an author of 15 books including The Meaning of Sport en-uk Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:29 GMT Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. custserv@timesonline.co.uk http://www.timesonline.co.uk Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:22:50 GMT Newspapers 144 21 http://www.timesonline.co.uk http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,116979,00.gif Simon Barnes Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:01:00 GMT 2010-02-05T07:52:58Z In one of Aesop’s fables, a thirsty crow is unable to reach the water in a jug. He tries to push the jug over, but fails. So he drops stones into the jug until the water level rises high enough for him to take his drink. Thus we are shown that thoughtfulness is superior to brute strength. It is not, then, a story about crows. It is a story about humans. You wouldn’t get a real crow behaving like that, now would you? Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:01:00 GMT 2010-01-29T11:49:38Z Suffolk is not flat. It’s important to get that into your head before you come here. Suffolk is fascinatingly but subtly curved. Think of Keira Knightley, but without the pout. Suffolk doesn’t need pouts to be alluring. Simon Barnes Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:01:00 GMT 2010-01-29T07:21:13Z It’s easy to meet my fellow sports writers: I just have to go to a football match, mingle with 50,000 or so hooligans, get into the ground and exchange the news and the banter. It’s harder to come across my fellow nature writers. There aren’t very many of us and we tend to hang out in places where there aren’t many people, and which are pretty hard to get to. However, I thought it might be a good plan to try my luck, so I went to a place where I could mingle with 50,000 or so hooligans. Simon Barnes Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:01:00 GMT 2010-01-22T07:30:32Z Don’t you just hate it when you solve a problem and move on — only for the problem to start up again as soon as you’ve turned your back? Simon Barnes Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:01:00 GMT 2010-01-15T09:26:23Z You know, quite a lot can be done when people actually want to do it. But the corollary holds good as well: things that aren’t a great deal of trouble simply won’t get done if people can’t be bothered. Sometimes all it takes is for a few people to change their minds. Changing the world is sometimes just a matter of the will to do the changing.