Are Eric and Ernie no longer funny?

LEAVING aside any concerns about Whitehall's latest plan to turn women into trench-fighting soldiers, aren't you a wee bit depressed at headlines such as "Female troops on the front line by 2016"? I hope by 2016 we won't have any front lines.

WHENEVER women are invited into rough, tough, men-only jobs, whether it's riot-policing, firefighting or the military, we are always assured that physical standards will not be lowered. And they always are. We expect infantrymen to carry anything up to 100lbs on their back. I doubt if one per cent of women can do that and the lesson of history is that if enough women can't meet the standards, then it's the standards that have to be changed. I once served in a Royal Signals unit commanded by a woman. A quarter of the soldiers were female and our communications centre would not have functioned without them. But if you needed a damn great generator hauling out of the mud at 3am, you'd get a couple of big burly signalmen on the job, not the ladies. That's not sexism, it's common sense.

SMALL world. A few days ago I described finding a goldcrest on our patio and picking it up. Only a few days earlier a reader had the identical experience. She reports: "I found this little bird on our driveway, not knowing what it was. I identified it in a bird book. My husband who has lived all his 77 years in the countryside, had never seen one before." Are goldcrests falling out of the skies? Any theories from you twitchers?

IT'S a generation thing. Mrs Rhodes and I were falling off the sofa at the repeat of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas highlights when our daughter (readers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away at this stage) said it wasn't funny.

NOT funny? I can only guess it has something to do with the changing nature of celebrity. Today's celebs pop up all over the place. We are used to the idea of a serious news reporter or a politician appearing on Strictly or I'm a Celebrity. But 30-odd years ago people tended to be famous for one thing. They stuck at it and were revered for it. And then suddenly, Eric and Ernie persuaded that fine classical actor Eric Porter to do a dance routine. Andre Previn, a world-famous conductor, was lured into Eric's ivory-tinkling. Angela Rippon emerged from behind the holy-of-holies, the BBC News desk, in that high-kicking version of Let's Face the Music. Deference was demolished and we could not believe what we were seeing. The only thing comparable in modern times was the opening of the 2012 Olympics when we realised, to our shock and delight, that the woman briefing 007 was not a Queen lookalike but the real thing. If only Eric and Ernie had booked her.

I HAVE started another stretch of garden wall at Chateau Rhodes and bought some coping stone with a V-shaped top. In the building trade, this profile is inexplicably described as "twice weathered." It occurrs to me how many of the items used in bricklaying sound like Shakespearian characters: "Here cometh doughty Lumphammer, brave Bolster with his faithful servants Pointing, Level and Sharpsand, and old, twice-weathered Coping." I really ought to get out more.

YOU can't lay bricks when it is frosty so many thanks for these few mild days in the run-up to Xmas. As people very nearly said during those fateful times a century ago, the wall will be over by Christmas.

OVER as in finished, that is, not fallen down.