Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Clegg?

AND the Bafta for total unbelievability goes to – Tom Hanks's teeth. We are accustomed to Hollywood gnashers being in an impossibly pearly-white class of their own. But Hanks is now sporting a set which goes beyond white and almost into the ultra-violet spectrum, each hypnotically dazzling tooth with its own inner glow, as if illuminated by a tiny bulb. In years to come, when the madness of Tinseltown dentistry has become a passing fad, Hanks and Co will look back at starry-shining smiles like this and think, ye gods, whatever possessed us?

SUNDAY. Sunshine, blue sky, gentle winds. Do you think that might have been the Summer of 2014?

WITH the row over keeping the pound and losing EU membership, the Scottish independence debate last week looked like one of those deliciously civilised divorces when the couple are determined to stay friends. She wants the Volvo? No problem. He wants the piano? Be my guest. And then suddenly you hit a raw point. The civilised smiles vanish. Spitting, snarling fury takes over. What's that? You'd like the dog, too? Over my dead body, you greedy cow. But the longer this saga drags on, the more you realise it isn't like a divorce at all. A married couple is made up of two separate bodies but Scotland and England are hard-wired into each other. We share the same blood, muscle and sinews. Independence is like separating a pair of conjoined twins. Given enough time and clever, skilled surgeons, it might be done with both twins surviving. But time is running out and we don't see much skill or cleverness, just a lot of posturing and waving of claymores. This could get very bloody indeed.

NICK Clegg says he would consider forming a coalition with Labour. And after last week's lost-deposit wipeout at Wythenshawe, how many Lib-Dem MPs does he expect to have? One word sums up the future of the Lib-Dems after the May 2015 general election. It is not "coalition". It is "history."

JUST before Christmas I wrote that there is no more wretched experience than to be flooded out of your own home. Today, our hearts go out to the victims. And let's hope that those local heroes who helped their neighbours with transport, shopping and sandbags are recognised in the next Honours List.

BUT it is not all misery. The vast majority of people in England, those living well away from the coast and flood plains, have been no more than mildly inconvenienced. They may have lost the occasional fence panel or roof tile but, despite the gales, this winter so far has been remarkably benign. With no ice or snow, there have been few road deaths or broken bones on slippery pavements, no rash of schools closed by burst pipes. There has been no hypothermia epidemic among our elderly and no surge in flu cases. And milder temperatures mean we are burning less fuel.

OF COURSE, the climate-change Jesuits are portraying this squally winter as a) a disaster and b) the norm for the future. It is neither. For most of us, an experience like this is a damn sight more bearable than the snow-bound nightmares of December 2010 or last year's endless winter. As for such extreme weather becoming routine, let's give it a while, shall we? The polar-vector effect in North America, which gave birth to our storms, was a rare combination of circumstances not seen since 1998. I cannot see such things happening regularly.

HOWEVER, if we do get similar weather events in, say, three successive winters you have my permission, as our American cousins put it, to slap my ass and call me Judy (a midwifery expression, apparently).