The best of this week’s Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.

I AM a little puzzled by a job advert offering “6.6 weeks holiday inclusive of bank holidays.” What is 0.6 of a week?

GREY  squirrels are tree rats. They steal eggs, kill fledglings and have driven Britain’s native red squirrel out of most of England. They are vicious, green-fanged pests and when Raymond Elliot caught one in a trap in his Staffordshire garden he did what generations of people have done with trapped rats. He drowned it. By doing so, he doubtless saved the lives of many little birds. However, a member of the public shopped him to the RSPCA .  Mr Elliot , who was the only witness to this killing, said the squirrel died “almost instantaneously” but  pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering. The magistrates in Burton-on-Trent let him off with a six-month conditional discharge. However, by then the RSPCA had conducted a post-mortem and run up costs of more than £1,500 which Mr Elliot was ordered to pay. This ruling has made the world a safer place for grey squirrels and a rather less safe place for songbirds. It has also ensured that, when next confronted by an RSPCA collecting tin, many of us will tell them to get lost.

THE burqa issue rattles on. In these disability-aware times, a reader asks: “How is a deaf person expected to lip-read someone wearing a burqa?” Another reader points out that if we ban the burqa we will also have to ban Spider-Man.

WE have this vague  idea of  prehistoric Britain occupied by grunting thugs with big clubs living in caves. The Flintstones have a lot to answer for.
And then the archeologists dig up something that makes us think again. This time it’s the remains of a vast wooden  structure close to Stonehenge.  It was found during a new search of just a few square miles and it makes you wonder what else there is to find beneath our feet.
Prehistoric Britain was not the Flintstones wilderness we imagine. It was a place of huge monuments, vast hill forts, sweeping highways and elaborate burial mounds. This was civil engineeering on a grand scale. Britain then was a place of energy, imagination, worship and, above all, organisation. Modern Egyptians are fiercely proud of their ancient pyramids. We should be no less proud of what our ancestors did.

GOOD news or bad news? It’s all a question of where you get your news:
“Cuckoos are disappearing fast. How many more ecological warnings do we need?” (Daily Telegraph).
“Decline of the cuckoo?” (Country Life).
“One of our favourite birds may be in terminal decline.” (The Independent).
“Cuckoo fears.” (BBC News).
“Rejoice! Nest Bullies Get Come-Uppance.” (The Reed Warbler Weekly)

THE Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment have a traditional way of greeting each other. It is called a fight. In these cash-strapped times, there is talk of merging the two organisations. This should be interesting, given that the powers-that-be (not to mention generations of Military Police)  have spent the past 60 years trying to keep them apart. I would not want to be running the first-aid tent at the merger parade.

THE council at King’s Lynn has given its staff speed guns to detect anyone exceeding the 5mph limit at a rubbish dump. Repeat offenders will be banned. This is idiocy piled upon ignorance and if you don’t understand why, just try driving and maintaining your speed below 5mph (which is not marked on any car speedometer) while keeping your eyes safely on the road.  Can’t be done.

NICK Clegg gets his moment of glory in Prime Minister’s Questions and uses it to announce that  the war in Iraq was illegal. He might have had the decency to announce a few more bank holidays while he was at it.

THE wonders of old technology. A reader approaching 90 heard a plopping sound and discovered that the cheap electric clock he bought 35 years ago had fallen off the wall and into the watering can he was about to take into the garden.  It was thoroughly soaked, the tick had  stopped and it seemed destined for the tip. But as it dried out, it started working again and now looks fit for another 35 years. Do not try this with an iPod.

“HERE’S a reason to rejoice,” exclaims one of the tabloids, introducing a survey which allegedly  proves we Brits are “the happiest people in Europe.”
Not exactly. What the survey actually shows is that we smile more than anyone else, which is not quite the same thing. The French, who believe in facing life with a sombre expression, regard the British as a race of grinning idiots. They may be right. As far as I am aware, we British are the only people who say sorry – and smile – when someone treads on their toes.

ON a trip to Wales I passed the village of Knockin, which must be a hard place to open a shop.  A reader recalls a great night in nearby Baschurch in his National Service days when the village dance was enlivened by a parade of local beauty queens. When Miss Knockin appeared there was almost a riot.  I fear this may be only the tip of an iceberg of Knockin yarns

SCIENTISTS are warning that this hot summer could result in a shortage of broccoli later in the year. The wind of change?

KEEP Britain Tidy is a state-funded charity whose brief is to reduce litter. Who can argue with that? Litter is the most offensive form of environmental pollution.  But is it any more offensive than Keep Britain Tidy’s latest campaign slogan: “Bend Over And Think Of England”?
Keep Britain Tidy calls it humorous and saucy. It’s no such thing. It is a coarse,  immature redraft of the Victorian advice to girls on their wedding night: “Lie back and think of England”. Changing the words to “bend over” adds grubby overtones. It’s not big, it’s not clever and it will have damn-all effect on littering.  This campaign is environmental  pollution on a grand scale. And we’re paying for it.

OOPS. Muslims in Indonesia have been praying in the wrong direction for the past four months. The country’s Muslim authorities apparently made a mistake in calculating where Mecca is and the faithful were pointing their prayer mats at Africa. Can this possibly explain why the World Cup oorganisation was such a dazzling success? Before the series began, some doom-mongering sceptics said South Africa didn’t have a prayer.