Peter Rhodes: Let's save some of that flood water

JANUARY gardening tips: 1) mow the lawn, 2) pick the daffs, 3) apply midge-repellant and factor 30.

ANYONE who remembers the drought of 1976 will be wary about the latest plans to dredge rivers to let these billions of gallons of unwanted flood water escape into the sea as quickly as possible. Come August, we may wish we'd saved a bit.

IN 1976, parched England somehow had to find enough water for a population of 44 million. Today England's population is about 54 million, using an average of 150 litres a day. I like to think someone in authority has done the maths.

YES, it was petty, vindictive and short-sighted. But the most worrying thing about Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet reshuffle was that it was agonisingly slow. Assuming he ever got to Downing Street, how would this great thinker, debater, negotiator and all-round procrastinator react to a sudden crisis?

FOR four days the German media ignored an inconvenient truth. It was that on New Year's Eve a gang of up to 1,000 boys and men of North African or Arab appearance had poured into Cologne to rape, grope, mug and generally terrify women in what appeared to be a planned assault. The local police chief describes the outrage as "a completely new dimension of crime." There were similar incidents in other German cities. A mass protest by women has followed, Chancellor Merkel has expressed her disgust at the events and the media have, at last, taken up the story ("Cologne inquiry into 'coordinated' New Year's Eve sex attacks" - Guardian, etc). It is bad enough that such a thing could have happened and been hushed up by the forces of political correctness. But it raises a truly terrifying question. If 1,000 alienated young males can organise an attack in the heart of a Western city for sexual purposes, what else might they organise?

THE Drama Channel describes Gallipoli as "the biggest error of World War One" for its new series, Deadline Gallipoli. But was it? The Great War was full of cock-ups. Gallipoli was bad but the Somme and Passchendaele were worse. Yet the real errors were the ones committed before the war began when nations were recklessly encouraging their allies to be bold. Germany offered Austria the infamous "blank cheque" and Britain secretly assured France that the Royal Navy would defend her Channel ports against German attacks. We egged each other on to Armageddon.

A READER says I must have been living under a stone never to have heard of the late Lemmy from Motorhead. But I am not alone. Another reader says Lemmy and Dawn should never have split up. Yet another says Lemmy's stage act never recovered from the death of Terry Hall.

A FRIEND gave me an old book on sailing for Christmas. You will gather how old from its section on rope-making which begins: "The materials used are the fibres of plants; manilla, hemp, sisal, cotton, and coconut, and a synthetic substance known as nylon."

AS any knowledgeable person will tell you, the name nylon is an abbreviation of New York and London where the stuff was first developed. Like so many facts peddled by the knowledgeable, this one is an urban myth. Nylon was dreamed up by a committee.