AMONG the questions not answered - or even asked as far as I can see - over the foot-and-mouth crisis, is: what takes place at the at the "fattening" unit in Northumberland which is a suspected source of the outbreak?

Yes, of course, pigs are fattened there. But how? With what? Over how long, or short, a period? Most important - why?

Obviously, to make them fat. But why aren't they simply kept on the farm where they have been raised until their time has come?

When I was a boy, my father kept a couple of pigs, which got fat enough on our small patch of land. Perhaps the fatness of pigs grubbing around in the good earth, supplemented of course with their swill, isn't fat enough for today's market?

Outdoor space does not seem to be a consideration in fattening. That Northumberland fattening unit didn't have enough land even for the funeral pyre of its 400 or so pigs, which had to be burned on land of a neighbouring farmer whose stock, though uninfected, also had to be destroyed.

The pictures of the fattening unit hardly matched the bucolic image of farming still often used to promote the products of such enterprises. But what went on inside might have been a dream come true for both pigs and consumers. If we could have peered in, we might have found not the industrialisation of food but a pinnacle of animal husbandry, yielding the highest quality and most wholesome pork and bacon. Which would make the foot-and-mouth outbreak all the more tragic.

But I would still like to know - why do pigs need "fattening" in "units"? And how, and with what, is this done? Somehow the present crisis will pass. But broader and deeper questions about the production of our food will remain.

TONY BLAIR'S meeting with the new US president George W Bush brought the usual talk of the so-called "special relationship". But if this ever existed, it has long been a figment.

The US will do pretty much what it wants regardless of any ally. And US citizens have surprisingly little interest in Britain, except for its royal family. Harold Evans, the distinguished former editor of this newspaper, once remarked that when he went to live in the US, he was amazed by the paucity of British news in the media.

If Tony Blair, when asked about the special relationship on his return from meeting Bush, had replied: "Special relationship? What special relationship?'' he would have been nearer the truth than when Jim Callaghan, stepping from his plane during the 1974 Winter of Discontent, when bodies were unburied and rubbish piled up in the streets, said: "Crisis? What crisis?''

THERE is an extraordinary picture of Don Bradman playing a late cut. He is making the stroke about two yards down the pitch, having intended to drive but changing his mind at the last split second, outrageously late-cutting a fast bowler from an "impossible" position.

If there is any performer in any other field to whom the phrase "greatest ever'' can be applied without the qualifying words arguably or probably, I can't think of one. Statistics apart, the utter dominance of Bradman is most tellingly revealed in pictures, not of himself, but of the wicket keepers behind him. Without exception, they wear an expression of absolute hopelessness - a despair that any ball might even pass the bat, let alone offer them a catch or stumping.

Flickering film of Bradman reveals something else - his quick running. He rarely hit sixes, preferring to keep the ball safely on the ground. But his swift singles and twos contributed as much as boundaries to the unmatched frequency of his centuries.