Rhodes on calming music, controlling cyclists and why the Clangers can relax

The re-vamped Highway Code advises cyclists to ride in the middle of their lane, not close to the kerb. Is this from the people who gave us smart motorways?

One of my younger readers, a lady in her 90s, takes me to task for my perceived lack of support for Radio 3 in any BBC spending cuts. She makes the point that not only does she enjoy R3 greatly but that today's kids, “hyped up on loud, incessant noise, would benefit by calm, beautiful sound, given the chance”. It may be worth a try.

Poo-sticks time again. The procedure has been simplified. When I first took part in the mass screening for bowel cancer, you had to take two samples on separate occasions. Now there is only one poo stick which makes the procedure, while still hideously inelegant, at least a little cheaper and, presumably, easier for the medics to analyse. Killing two birds with one stool.

Seven years after being launched from Florida, a Falcon 9 space rocket is heading out of control towards the moon and will crash into it in early March. Naturally, my first reaction to this news was, has anyone warned the Clangers?

However, I learn from Google that the Clangers do not live on the moon (as I had assumed since they first appeared in 1969) but on a “small, moon-like planet”. So presumably they are safe. Much relief.

Meanwhile, much further into deep space, the new James Webb telescope has arrived at its operating location one million miles from Earth and, according to one thrilling report, is “gearing up to look back in time towards the dawn of the universe”. Exactly so. The further you look into space, the further back in time you see. So if James Webb discovers a planet 20 million light years away, you're not seeing it as it is today but as it was 20 million years ago. If by some magical process we could search for the same planet in real Earth time, we might find it had vanished 10 million years earlier, along with the rest of the universe.

My private theory is that somewhere Out There, all that remains of the universe is a giant cinema curtain draped across the empty heavens bearing the words: “That's all, folks.”