Peter Rhodes - June 9

OWN up. Until the recent planetary event, how many of you thought the Transit of Venus was an erogenous zone?

I REFERRED recently to the weather forecaster who warned us that things were "murking up". A reader writes: "Isn't murking up what Geordie couples do after a row?" Why, aye.

A FRIEND who was seriously ill is better and I found myself weeping at the news. It is a strange thing but we blokes can hold back the tears when coping with most things, but not relief.

A READER asks, if "appearance-related discrimination" became illegal as some MPs are suggesting and you could be punished for calling a fat person fat, what will happen to people who sell mirrors?

ANOTHER TV taboo broken, another frontier crossed. I refer, of course, to the boss-on-the-toilet scene in last week's Episodes (BBC2). Nice work by the sound engineers.

AS the Jubilee break ended, my personal contribution to the noble ideals of the celebrations (namely to go somewhere wet and shiver) began. I was busy running my sailing association's annual rally or, as I rebranded it when I noticed the clash of dates, the Diamond Jubilee Rally. It consisted of boats and their crews going somewhere very wet indeed and shivering a great deal. There is an old outdoors saying, usually chirped by hearty people in gaiters who need a good slapping, which goes: "There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong sort of clothing." It is, of course, bunkum. The rally is the one occasion of the year when I sleep under what we used to call canvas. When people exclaim: "Oh, we love camping!" I wonder which bit they enjoy the most, the damp clothes, the fetid sleeping bag, the bloody dawn chorus at 4am or the noise of complete strangers snoring, belching and having sex. Camping is what humans did before they invented mud huts. Every year I promise myself a comfortable couple of nights in a B&B and every year at the rally I find myself erecting my manky old tent, spurred on by the base emotion that is the true driving force of all camping. Meanness.

A CHURCHGOING reader believes he may have the solution to the famous infestation of bats which has closed St Hilda's Church in Ellerburn, North Yorkshire. He suggests: "Baptise them. You'll never see them again."

NO-ONE should be surprised that Whitehall is moving the car-tax goalposts. First, it adjusted car tax to reward lean, green little vehicles. The result is that some car owners now pay no road tax at all. Now it emerges that, tucked away in the small print of the Budget is a hint that the tax thresholds will be adjusted "to ensure that all motorists continue to make a contribution to the sustainability of the public finances." This is not a party issue. Labour and the Tories are past masters at so-called fiscal drag, the art of leaving taxes at the same level but lowering the threshold at which we pay them.

THE best bit of the Jubilee? With hindsight, although the river pageant was brilliant and the concert fine, the real treat was seeing all those private cine films from the early days of the Royal Family, kept secret for the past 60-odd years. A Jubilee Tribute to the Queen (BBC1) did more to show the normal, caring, family side of the Windsors than any amount of toadying documentaries. I'm amazed, given the propaganda value of these treasures and the many crises the family has been through, that they haven't been released before.

THE programme was presented by the Prince of Wales who, lest we forget, is only 63. He could pass for at least 73 and in this programme he seemed hesitant, emotional and doddery. In his 20s, Prince Charles was working hard at being middle-aged. The trouble with acting older than your years is that it's hard to switch off. At this rate, he'll soon look more like the Queen's brother than her son.

A REPORT suggests that 41 is the age when most of us go off in search of adventure. That's another bandwagon I've missed. Actually, you get a lot more out of adventures at 61 than you do at 41. That's because the older you get, the more scared you get. Worming the cat? Terrifying.

HOW do you become an extremist? Simple. You just stand still for 20 years. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke says that the demand for a referendum on Britain staying in the EU is no more than "the demand of a few right-wing journalists and a few extreme nationalist politicians." In other words, if you don't support the steady absorption of the UK into the European Superstate, you are some sort of swivel-eyed Little Englander. And yet how many Brits, only two decades ago, ever imagined that most of our laws (and most of our problems) would come from Brussels? The only vote we ever had on Europe was to join a Common Market of sovereign democracies. If you dare mention that today, you're an extremist.