Peter Rhodes on Meghan's job description, making the NHS Royal and an unexpected after-effect of the Covid jab

When does middle age begin and end? I particularly enjoyed a reader's tale of a solicitor who, on the eve of a birthday, declared he was “approaching early middle age.” It was his 90th birthday.

A Facebook campaign has been launched to rename the NHS the Royal National Health Service “to give it the recognition it deserves.” It's not the first time such an honour has been proposed and it won't be the last but I fear it is doomed. The usual suspects would surely denounce the word “Royal” as a link to the wicked old British Empire and therefore an insult to the legacy of slavery endured by health-service employees from black and ethnic minorities.

What's more, if the “Royal” re-naming went ahead there would be a spate of RNHS signs being defaced by the same sort of people who spend their time painting over “Welcome to Wales” signs. I bet the majority of NHS workers would be thrilled to have Royal recognition but, as you've probably noticed, this country is governed not by thrilled majorities but by noisy pressure groups.

About 10 million people have now had the Covid-19 jab and must be wondering what to expect. My personal theory is that there will be no significant after-effects from vaccines developed, tested and approved in less than a year - except that we will all live to be 400. . . .

While all eyes were on Meghan Markle's name appearing incorrectly on little Archie's birth certificate this week, mine were caught by the mother's section of the document reading: “Occupation: Princess of the United Kingdom.” Occupation? More of a brief hobby, wasn't it?

Memory Lane. Images of anti-lockdown riots in Eindhoven took me back to a night in the Dutch city in the 1980s when I was covering an old soldiers' pilgrimage to Arnhem. I was in a hotel room in Eindhoven with another reporter, Ray Seaton. There was the usual awkwardness that goes with sharing space with a stranger.

Ray was a neat room mate, folding his clothes into precise squares and laying them out on shelves in the bathroom. He insisted I should use the shower first. I ran both taps to get the right temperature then flicked the switch for the shower. I have never seen water pressure like it. The shower hose suddenly rose like a living thing. The shower head flew off its mounting on the wall and thrashed around the bathroom like an anaconda with a seizure, drenching the shelves and washing Ray's neat piles of vests and Y-fronts on to the floor. Entirely unruffled, Ray sat on the edge of the bath wringing out his smalls as he smilingly observed that such things happen. A gentleman.

Carey Mulligan protests that a film critic described her as not being “hot enough” for one part. It raises an interesting point: is it possible to be hot and have dimples? In the meantime, catch Mulligan at her complex and perfectly-observed best in The Dig (Netflix). Excellent.