Best of Peter Rhodes - July 24
The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.
The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.
TWO adjoining headlines in the Independent:
* NHS Prepares for 65,000 Deaths from Swine Flu
* Reassurance is the Key to Keeping the Public Calm
THE BIBLE-bashing elders on the Isle of Lewis say the new Sunday ferry service breaks the Commandment about observing the Sabbath. But can they or anyone else explain why, when decent, Godfearing folk are resting on the Sabbath, all the priests are working?
"IMMIGRATION may have helped, since immigrant families often have more conservative attitudes than the degenerate natives". The Economist, explaining a fall in Britain's divorce rate.
"BRITAIN will be warm enough to grow figs," blared one of yesterday's headlines on global warming. It already is, you dimwits.
NOT that the fig tree at Chateau Rhodes meets all our figgy needs. Some years ago my wife innocently told our astonished German lodger: "I'm just popping into town for some figs." In a family newspaper, I cannot begin to explain how rude this is in German.
AMID all the claims and counter-claims on public spending over the past few weeks, I have been wending my way to and from work along a dual carriageway which used to have a 70 mph limit. A couple of years ago the authorities decided to reduce the limit to 50 mph and, at the same time, closed some of the crossings in the central reservation. One consequence was that people living in a small country lane had to drive an extra mile down the dual carriageway to the nearest roundabout to reach their homes. In other words, a road-safety project had actually put more traffic on to a busy road. Oops. So the latest step has been to create a massive new roundabout on the dual carriageway to serve the few families living in this little country lane. God knows how much it has all cost and I'm not sure the road is any safer than it ever was. Still, it's only money, innit?
FORTY years after its finest hour, the radio telescope in the remote Australian town of Parkes is enjoying a surge of visitors. And no wonder. On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong stepped on to the Moon. At that same moment, the moon popped over the horizon in Australia and Parkes picked up its radio transmissions. The images we saw came from Oz, not America. Parkes's part in history inspired the film, The Dish, which contains one of my all-time great movie moments. It comes as the dish manager, Sam Neill, is assuring his bosses that his staff (who are actually playing cricket on the massive concrete dish) are totally committed to the Apollo task. The bosses turn to go. At that moment a cricket ball drops into view and Neill deftly catches it. Wonderful.
THE NEW Constitutional Reform Bill will, among other things, enable peers such as Lord Mandelson to resign from the Lords. As plain Peter he would then be able to stand for election as Prime Minister. It always struck me as very odd that Gordon Brown would invite his old enemy into his innermost circle, without remembering Mandelson's mantra from long ago: "PM for PM." Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make forgetful.
INCIDENTALLY, there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that they are planning to rename the Flying Scotsman locomotive after Gordon Brown simply by removing the letter F.
THE COUPLE next to us in the restaurant must have had a combined weight of well over 50 stone. Their chief concern came over ordering their drinks, a pitcher of Pimm's. "You could have it with lemonade," Mr Blobby counselled Ms Blobby, several chins wobbling reproachfully "but there's less sugar in soda water." They nobly opted for the soda and then finished off the meal with two ginormous knickerbocker glories. If you've had too much to drink, pubs will refuse to serve you. It's high time the same rule applied to food.
ALAN Sugar enters the House of Lords and, as a peer, is entitled to wear ermine. You're furred.
I PAUSED from clearing the gutters at Chateau Rhodes to study a report on how water bills will rise sharply to help meet the costs of droughts in the next 40 years. Now, which droughts might those be? Are they in any way connected to the "barbecue summer" we were promised some weeks ago before the heavens opened and all our charcoal was washed away? It is astonishing how weather forecasters who can't get 2009's weather right pontificate with such authority on the weather for 2050.
WE may never know where the phrase "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" came from but Gary Peach's version has the ring of truth. The electronics engineer was working for Nasa in 1969. He says he composed the words, later spoken by Neil Armstrong, because he was worried what an excited American might blurt out. Peach says he feared the first words spoken on the moon might have been: "Holy s**t! Look at all that ****ing dust!"
NOT a single local council has signed up to the latest government brainstorm to reduce drunkenness by banning booze in some areas. Maybe that's because, with typical Whitehall idiocy, the plan sounds exactly the opposite of what it is meant to be. Would you fancy venturing into something called an Alcohol Disorder Zone?
THIS month's Therapist magazine is advertising courses in chair massage. The last thing you want is a stressed-out chair.
THE Stock Market this week recorded its longest run of gains for four years. It went from tiddlysquit to tiddlysquit-and-a-bit. Rejoice.
"THE thinking man's violin". The ukulele, as defined by Homer Simpson.
