Will the floods kill off HS2?

IN A reckless moment on Tuesday I suggested the floods might spell the end of HS2. A few hours after my column appeared, a BBC report suggested the need to repair existing lines might put the future of the high-speed railway in doubt. And you can bet your life auntie Beeb would not suggest such a thing unless she has been talking to someone important.

IF the floods do lead to HS2 being cancelled, it will be the closest thing to divine intervention this cheerfully godless nation of ours is ever likely to see. Get ready with those hallelujahs.

IN the meantime, is it too much to ask that every politician visiting the flooded areas might at least take a stirrup pump or a couple of buckets?

A DAILY Telegraph reader points out that "filling sandbags" is a waste of time. A jam-packed sandbag will not mould its shape to the adjoining bags and seal leaks. For best results, only half-fill those sandbags.

I WROTE fondly a few days ago of the golden age of broadcasting when intelligence and learning were revered and one of the most popular programmes was the Brains Trust. A reader of the same vintage reminds me that this period of towering intellectual majesty also featured Archie Andrews, a ventriloquist act on the radio. That's right, a ventriloquist you couldn't actually see. Peter Brough made a good living talking to a wooden puppet on the radio. It was only when he and Archie Andrews appeared on television that we realised what a terrible ventriloquist he was. Agsolute gollox.

SOME friends have gone on holiday, asking us to keep an eye on their mansion. This time, however, they have a CCTV camera system which they can monitor from their smartphones in New York. You cannot believe the temptation each night to put on a striped jumper and a balaclava, carry a large sack marked "swag" and pop up in front of the cameras.

THE printer-grass is the person in an office who, on finding an A4 sheet left under the cover, waves it noisily and demands: "Whose is this?" until someone owns up that the darts-club results or school-reunion flyer is actually theirs. If you think that's embarrassing, wait until the 3D printer becomes commonplace. This is the device capable of producing solid objects such as handguns and, more usefully, bits of the human body. A surgeon in Newcastle has used a 3D printer to create a new portion of a pelvis for a man who had lost his to cancer. The replacement is a perfect fit. But who knows where this will lead, or what other organs may be reproduced in the same way? Imagine the embarrassment as the printer-grass waves a perfect plastic copy of some intimate and wobbly body-part inadvertently left on the machine and demands: "Whose is this?"

CATE Blanchett says one of the ingredients in her happy marriage to Andrew Upton is that they share the same email address. "I can see what he's up to," says the actress, adding quickly: "It's not that I don't trust him." Here's one to write into your marriage vows: "For richer, for poorer and sharing all emails."

THAT rarest of things, an intact Japanese kamikazi aircraft, is to go on show at the fleet Air Arm Museum near Yeovil. I am reminded of a documentary some years ago on the feared kamikazi suicide bombers which revealed that they have an annual reunion and produced one of the most memorable quotes in the history of modern warfare. "I was in a kamikazi unit for about 18 months," recalled one veteran. "Admin, mostly." Mostly?