Peter Rhodes: Swallows and Asbos

I WAS tempted to go to a screening of the new Swallows and Amazons film until I saw the online previews. I'm not sure I want to watch a bunch of kids who can sail better than I can.

ARTHUR Ransome's adventure in the Lakes is very much a piece of its time. The 1930s kids have sharp knives, they light open fires, declare war on other kids and go sailing without lifejackets. If this movie were set in 2016 it would be Swallows and Asbos.

THE parents would probably get arrested, too. Swallows and Amazons begins with the kids' naval captain father hearing of their proposed voyage and sending the famous Duffers' Telegram to the children he has inexplicably named Titty and Roger: "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers won't drown." So that's desertion, child neglect and dodgy forename-selection. The CPS would have a field day.

THEY call it the world's most mysterious book. The 15th century Voynich Manuscript, locked away for the past half-century in a vault at Yale University, is written in a text of unknown characters which have defeated generations of cryptographers. Now, a publisher in Spain is producing a limited edition of perfect replicas which may inspire yet more would-be codebusters. If the Voynich Manuscript is cracked, I would put money on the translator being either a ninetysomething British survivor of Bletchley Park or a teenage geek somewhere in the Far East using his mum's computer.

BEATEN into third place by Team GB, China ought to be sulking. Far from it. All is calm and serenity. "The mentality has been changed," smiles their defeated taekwondo competitor Wu Jingyu, beatifically. "Winning and losing isn't everything . . . in China we no longer look at the number of medals to judge if an athlete is great or not." Hang on. Isn't that the sort of cobblers our own dear British athletes used to spout in the days when they were dropping the batons, kicking over the hurdles and generally floundering about while the rest of the world grabbed all the gongs? Times change. This year we steal China's medals and China steals our old excuses.

AS the nation's favourite bare-chested scyther prepares for another series, a Daily Telegraph reader asks a pertinent question. Why do we call the drama POLdark? Most Cornish words have the stress on the second syllable as with PolZEATH, PenZANCE and PolPERRO. So why is this show not PolDARK? Answers by email, thanks, not on a postCARD.

MEANWHILE, what has happened to the TV ad for Kelly's ice cream, the first commercial ever to be spoken entirely in Cornish? I wonder if it has been pulled. While it was entertaining to see a Cornish ice-cream seller in a baseball cap standing in a field speaking in Cornwall's native tongue, he did come across as the village idiot. I blame the baseball cap.

THE following has been judged the funniest joke at this year's Edinburgh Fringe: "My dad has suggested that I register for a donor card. He's a man after my own heart." I am reminded of the old Punch magazine which, throughout its 160-year history was never as funny as it used to be.