Peter Rhodes: HS2 will soon be obselete

Lord Grantham: "Carson, you seem a little agitated."

Carson: "My Lord, I have just had word that a large meteorite has struck Ripon. It would appear that thousands of survivors and looters are heading for Downton even as we speak."

Grantham: "I see. Best not to alarm the ladies, Carson. Tell Mrs Patmore to make plenty of sandwiches and tea. And Carson?"

Carson: "My Lord?"

Grantham: "These looters may be desperate. It might be a good idea to hide the electric sewing machine."

Carson: "Very good, my lord."

INCIDENTALLY, did we all spot Milord's labrador wandering into the Downton Abbey garden bazaar and looking around for his real owner?

WHILE the HS2 saga rumbles noisily on it is reported that, thanks to new materials and technology, Henry Ford's elusive dream of a flying car could become reality in the next decade. This week comes news that driverless cars are to be used to ferry people around Milton Keynes on designated pathways. In California, plans have been unveiled for a "Hyperloop" transportation system capable of carrying passenger pods through pressurised tubes at 800mph. Look forward 15 years to 2028 and we could see safe, high-speed convoys of driverless lorries and cars on our motorways, 1,000mph tube trains in the States, and executives whizzing into city centres in their airborne limousines. That is about the time that HS2, the clanking, howling, horrendously expensive Victorian solution to England's transport problems, is supposed to start running. HS2 is unwanted now. It will be obsolete then.

THERE is another transport option, as all sci-fi geeks are aware. How long will it be before the DNA extracted from long-lost species, coupled with modern selective breeding programmes and genetic modification, produces a creature we can actually fly on, like the ikran, the mountain banshees in Avatar? Why build aircraft if you can simply breed them?

MIND you, we will have to sort out the manure problem. Half a hundredweight of banshee guano hurtling down from 20,000 feet could spoil your entire day.

WHILE all attention is focused on gas and electricity bills, the charity Money Advice Trust reports a shocking rise in the number of families with serious mobile-phone debts, caused largely by expensive contracts for smartphones. It reports that an average family of four can easily face bills of £140 a month - more than their total energy bills. That's what happens when a novelty comes to be regarded as an essential.

NEITHER the Royal Commission nor the Press's own regulator will do anything about one of the most offensive forms of journalism. You know the sort of thing. The Duchess of Cambridge appears in public with a hair or two out of place. The poison-penned bitches of Fleet Street pile in like vultures on a cadaver, sneering at "frayed at the edges" Kate. The great unfairness is that Kate, and celebrities like her, are snapped a thousand times a day and are expected to look perfect in every shot. Female columnists, on the other hand, hide behind a single byline photograph, usually taken with a soft-focus lens some years ago under studio conditions after a full facial and hairdo. I recall meeting one of Fleet Street's sharper-penned ladies, face to face. I have seen better-preserved objects dragged out of pyramids. Don't let them get you down, Kate.