Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on humming food, the unmasking of "Nick" and a curious reluctance to enter Paradise

A READER of the Times, commenting on the spread of regional accents on TV, asks how immigrants can possibly learn to write English when they hear that something costs "a rind eat thighs and pines." Puzzled? Just say it out loud and you're half-way to Belfast.

Published
Bishop Curry - uplifting?

TESCO is said to be leading the way in removing "best-before" dates from food items on the grounds that they are confusing. Quite so. Another problem is that you have to be literate and numerate and in possession of your reading glasses to understand them. I seem to recall from my bed-sit days that if you leave stuff long enough it emits a low hum, which is a useful guide.

A READER suggests I might have gained more from Bishop Curry's 14-minute sermon at the Royal Wedding if I had a greater attention span. Believe me, attention is not the issue. It's all a question of whether or not you are a believer. If you believe there is a supernatural deity somewhere Up There who created the universe, loves every one of us and has prepared a place of eternal bliss in the afterlife, then sermons such as this must be wonderfully uplifting and faith-affirming. If, on the other hand, you believe there is no God, and that religion is a system designed to keep people in their place with the promise that if this life is awful, things will be great when they're dead, then you probably regard all God-botherers as at best deluded and at worst dangerous. I have heard many holy men banging on about the Love of God and the joys of Heaven but I've yet to meet one who wants to go there.

HARVEY Proctor, the former MP falsely accused of child abuse and murder by an alleged fantasist hiding behind the name of "Nick," is suing the police and "Nick" for £1 million. Whether this means "Nick" will be publicly identified in open court remains to be seen. In the meantime, I repeat the question I asked some time ago. At any stage in this lives-wrecking and ruinously expensive inquiry, was "Nick" invited to take a lie-detector test? If not, why not?

I AM back on the water this week, organising a sailing rally which, by custom and practice, ends with a boat jumble. In theory, it's a chance to get rid of all those ropes, shackles and widgets you no longer need. In reality, it is a strange thing but the moment you part with some unwanted object for a pittance, you suddenly discover you desperately needed it after all.

INDEED, there may be an undiscovered law of physics at work. The deeper and more inaccessible in the attic your jumble widget is stored, the more you will need it once you have hoicked it out and flogged it. Jumble, widget, hoicked, flogged. What a great language we have.