Best of Peter Rhodes - May 17
Peter Rhodes' Express & Star column, taking a sideways look at the week's big news.
THERE are three of us boating around the isles; myself, my younger brother and my old mate Lennox. We are not as young as once we were and we did the sum last night of all the medications we are taking to ward off the ailments of middle age. This is Three Men and Eighty-Four Tablets on a Boat. Some vessels announce their arrival with horns or whistles. Ours rattles.
NO surprises about Olivia Colman winning two awards at the Baftas. I bet she'll be back in 2014 for her excellent performance in this year's murder mystery, Broadchurch. And here's another prediction. Watch out in 2014 for a best-supporting award for that old trouper Anton Lesser as the senior police officer in Endeavour. He doesn't just play the part; he becomes it, bringing all sorts of twitching prejudices and paranoia to it. What a pro.
DID you see the cops battering down the door of drug dealers in Liverpool this week as they broke up a multi-million pound drugs ring? It took forever. There was a time when the average front door parted company with its hinges after a couple of hefty whacks from the police battering ram. These days, steel-framed doors with five locking points, usually installed as part of a double-glazing package, can takes ages to smash open. Energy efficiency – the criminal's friend.
EVERY day seems to bring another Tory standing up to declare that, if a referendum were held tomorrow, he would vote to leave to leave the EU. So you might get the impression that withdrawal is imminent. Dream on. All David Cameron is offering is a referendum four years from now, assuming he is re-elected, which is a fairly bold assumption. Meanwhile, the real action is taking place in the eurozone, now on track to become virtually a single nation, because the only way to make the euro work is to have one central bank and one budget. This brave talk of pulling out is just smoke and mirrors. Britain is threatening to jump off a train bound for Brussels when the train has already been diverted to Berlin.
ON THE way up to Scotland, you can't help but be depressed at what the politicians have done to the hills, foresting them with enormous wind turbines which stand on the crest like white crosses, the Calvaries of the new faith. In the name of saving the environment, they ruin the environment. One day we may discover why so many billions of pounds have been ploughed into extracting electricity from something as fickle as wind. Our land is veined with mighty rivers ripe for hydro-electricity and surrounded with estuaries producing immeasurable tidal power, guaranteed 24 hours a day. So why the obsession with wind? I suspect the answer lies in government subsidies, enormous profits and the willingness of the people, brainwashed to believe they are to blame for climate change, to pay ever-increasing energy bills. Guilt, suffering and money - the three ingredients of a really successful religion.
IN THE paper shop a few days ago I found myself behind a couple of LAPs, which is a new social group I have just identified; Ladies of Ample Proportions. This well-hipped pair were moaning loudly about how expensive everything was getting. The electricity bills were a scandal and neither had any money left at the end of the week. One of the LAPs complained loudly that her son had 17 electronic devices and she was thinking of disconnecting the electricity to his bedroom. When this pair reached the counter one spent £105 on a top-up for her mobile phone and the other bought £50 worth of scratch cards.
A READER tells me he got a bargain at an auction. He snapped up a Victorian stuffed dog for just £20, probably because the tail was missing from this much-loved pet of the 1890s. He asked the auctioneer: "If this dog were in pristine condition, what would it have fetched?" And the auctioneer replied: "Sticks."
ON OUR Highland island, the storm struck at precisely 4.28am, whamming into the side of our cottage like a giant boot and striking dumb a flock of cackling oystercatchers on the beach. The little black-and-white birds had been joyously celebrating the dawn and then thought better of it and dashed for cover. By breakfast, Loch Lomond was a frenzy of wild water, white horses erupting from shore to shore with vicious little squalls corkscrewing through the tiny harbour. Not the ideal sailing day.
I WAS reminded of the unkind old joke. What's that special word the Scots use to describe the conditions when it's perishing cold, the rain is lashing down and the wind blows you off your feet? Summer.
