Best of Peter Rhodes - January 18

SOME weeks ago I warned readers to watch out for hard objects while eating pheasant. They could be lead shot. It might also be wise to watch out for hard objects while eating beefburgers. They could be horseshoes.

WHILE I enjoy your views on horse meat appearing in beefburgers, no more emails about Shergar. Thanks.

A READER writes: "I bought some burgers at the weekend . . . and they're off!

'TIS but a small thing in the great scheme of nature but don't you get a certain pride, watching Winterwatch (BBC2) to see beavers back in Britain? I'd love one day to see timber wolves stalking deer across the Highlands.

MEANWHILE, if I understand Government countryside policy correctly, the priority is to concrete over the Green Belt pretty damn quick in order to build enough houses for Bulgarians and Romanians. Anyone remember voting for this?

I WANTED a DVD of a classic drama series. Even a dinosaur like me knows there are two ways to do this. The first is to get up, dress smartly, get the car started, drive into town, find a parking place, buy a parking ticket, make your way to the DVD shop, avoiding the Big Issue sellers and charity muggers, find the DVD is out of stock and ask the shop staff if they can get you a copy. If they can get one, then you repeat the entire procedure a few days later and pay way over the odds for the DVD, plus £4 or so for the parking. The other way is to go online, buy the DVD at eBay for half the high-street price and get it delivered to your door by an obliging Portuguese courier who calls you Mr Road-ez. The wonder is not that HMV have gone bust but that their chain of town-centre shops lasted so long. The high street as we know it is doomed and the sooner we start turning department stores into apartments and houses, the better.

MEANWHILE, a reader who enjoys the old-fashioned shopping experience tells me in one store he was invited to "pre-order" a book. He muses, what is the difference between pre-ordering and simply ordering?

HERE we ago again. Yet another reader joins the growing ranks of people who, soon after encountering the NHS, get unsolicited contacts from private companies. She's a middle-aged lady who discovered at a routine blood test just before Christmas that her cholesterol was alarmingly high. Sure enough, three weeks later she was contacted by a health screening company which had already fixed a local appointment for her. She says it's either "a massive coincidence or something very fishy." Having had dozens of similar reports from readers, I think we can dismiss the coincidence line. My suspicion is that some employees of the NHS routinely sell private information.

WORDS to cherish. "We won't be moving because we have finally got our house just how we want it." John Baxter, 63, commenting this week on his £1 million win on EuroMillions.

A FREEZE on recruitment has created a nationwide shortage of police officers aged under 26, prompting one police commissioner to express fears about "the need to engage with younger people." Really? I seem to recall when I was a teenager and a young driver, the best sort of engaging came from older, wiser officers. The ones in their early 20s were more like school bullies.

A PAIR of twin brothers in Belgium were born deaf. At the age of 45 they were told they were both going blind. Unable to face the prospect, they asked to be put to death under Belgium's euthanasia laws, even though neither fitted the legal demand of being terminally ill or in pain. It was reported this week that they died of lethal injection on December 14. Has this case shocked Belgians into rethinking the law? Not at all. Under a new amendment, euthanasia will soon be available for children and Alzheimer's sufferers. When British enthusiasts for euthanasia talk blithely about "safeguards," just look across the North Sea and shudder.

"THIS minibar has been emptied for your convenience." Sign in a London hotel room, reported this week by a reader.

IT IS announced that the latest curriculum for primary schools will include imperial measurements including miles, feet and inches. I fear it will only add to the general mayhem. At present Britain is fumbling in a wasteland of confusion between metric and imperial measures, using both but competent in neither. Only this week the Daily Telegraph solemnly announced the discovery of part of a fossilised dinosaur "which would have been more than 66ft (20m) long (five times the length of a double-decker bus)." Which makes a double-decker bus about 12 feet long.

OUR changing language. The BBC reports that petrol bombs were thrown "at a sectarian interface" in Belfast. At a what . . . ?