Sharon Feinstein

I hear Britney’s hooked on fish and chips since she arrived in London. She’s having take-aways brought to her suite in the Dorchester Hotel, which is quite funny considering how many swanky restaurants there are below her. Also heard she’s sneaking off to the Spatisserie, a cross between a Spa and a Patisserie, compensation for working out in the gym before moving on to her favourite sports massage and facial in the spa. Apparently you drop in on a few bite-sized cakes, strawberry tarts and cucumber sandwiches – with no more tuna, of course. Poor Brit, let’s hope her all-seeing, all-controlling dad can’t follow her there and check up on how many cakes she sneaks. Gordon Brown has pledged to do better, what does that mean, pray? He can’t change his ingrained tactics or his personality, the only way he could possibly do better is to have the decency to step down and give the Labour Party a chance. I am finding it very difficult to make a booking for a long haul flight to the Far East for this summer’s holiday, paralysed by images of the doomed Air France airbus plummeting into the ocean. Is it worth considering Cornwall over Thailand this year, as it’s a mere train ride away, as opposed to the odd 7,000 miles at altitudes around 35,000 feet over Russia, Afghanistan, India, so many opportunities for turbulence, ice storms and other hidden dangers. Until now my biggest problem was how big the seat would be, which movies were showing, and the quality of the wine. But that was probably the kind of stuff going on while they flew over the Atlantic towards Paris and much  bigger things took over.

It probably only happens once in a lifetime. You see something  that hits you so hard, it’s a kind of sea change. A moment so powerful you feel you have to do something. You just cant forget about it and carry on with work,  meeting deadlines, gym, golf, sax playing, petty squabbles, diet problems. For Charles Clover it was the day he went fishing and realised that the fish had disappeared. He started to wonder why, began his investigations, made a film, The End of the Line, and now everyone’s talking and the results are beginning. Today its that Pret A Manger is going to stop selling tuna sandwiches after its boss was horrified at what the film reveals about intensive fishing methods. Tomorrow it might be Tescos deciding to stop selling exotic animals like terrapins in their supermarkets in China, one hopes.For me, the seismic moment came when I saw a leatherback turtle coming out of the foam on a dark beach in Tobago and watched her crawl up the sand, dig a hole with her flippers, and  go into an extraordinary trance with tears streaming down her small pointy face while she gave birth to 120 eggs over two hours, buried them all very carefully, and slowly made her way back into the ocean. I knew, from information I’d gathered on numerous trips to Tobago, that she was one of the lucky ones. Others never get back to the sea before the poachers pounce on them with their machetes. Leatherbacks are prehistoric creatures, they have survived since the time of the dinosaurs, and now in the 21st century it’s us who are about to cease their long life chain. I, we, can do something about this and my turtle campaign will go some way towards stopping them from becoming extinct. Please follow the campaign on my website and see what you feel you can do.