Peter Rhodes: Let's get crackling

MORE on eggcorns, those phrases which are created by people who have mis-heard the correct expression. A reader recalls a headteacher who would urge on his pupils with: "Now, let's get crackling!"

AND I swear I heard a pundit on the radio claiming that firms which invested in computers would "read the benefits."

NOT exactly an eggcorn, but a reader recalls a colleague who painted his kitchen to get rid of the condemnation.

JUSTIN Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, says Britain must face up to its responsibilities for conflict in the Middle East. Quite right. No-one denies that Britain and France made a pig's ear of carving the region into new states after driving out the Ottoman occupiers in the First World War. But I can recommend a book to the archbishop which shows that the never-ending slaughter by Middle East tribes began long before Britain and France even existed. The book is called the Bible.

WHO but the NHS could celebrate your impending birthday by inviting you to discover if you have a life-threatening condition? Approaching the required age, I have been called in for abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, a painless (they say) ultrasound test to find out whether the blood vessel is normal, dodgy or about to explode. I feel I have passed this way before. Exactly 10 years ago, a nurse struggling to read the doctor's handwriting after a heart scan, told me I had an enlarged artery. I went home, read all about aneurysms, prepared for death and decided, if the end was relatively nigh, to do something I had always promised myself. Two days later the GP called me in, explained that "enlarged artery" was actually "enlarged atrium" and even that diagnosis was wrong, probably because the diagnostic machine was over-sensitive. Everything was fine and I bounced out of that surgery like a spring chicken. But by then I had blown rather more than I intended on buying a boat. These days I sail with abandon and treat medical tests with caution.

YOU are a senior commander in the Garda, the Irish Republic's police force. Two rival gangs of drug-dealers are busy killing each other in a series of violent hits. Do you a) flood the streets with your finest armed officers in the hope of stopping the ungodly eliminating each other or b) give your lads the week off?

I WROTE a couple of years ago about a pal who had a panic attack during a hospital MRI scan. Orlando Gough, composer of the music for the new production of Doctor Faustus at Stratford, describes his scan as "the most terrifying experience of my life, partly because of the extreme claustrophobia and partly because of the bizarre, other-worldly sound." Although doctors have various ways of reducing the fear factor, the usual practice seems to be to wait until the screaming begins, and then decide whether to offer sedatives or therapy. There must be a better way.

A READER who will be 80 in September has received a note from the pension service. It is headed "The General Increase in Benefits" and informs him that an additional 25p per week will be payable from his birthday. He says the excitement is overwhelming.

AFTER yet another report reveals how rarely the average Brit talks to the people next door, my eye was caught by this online contribution: "I frequently check on my next-door neighbours. Or at least I used to before they took out the restraining order."