Bring on the concrete rhinos

SCIENTISTS in Denmark say the ecology of European forests could be greatly improved by reintroducing rhinos, elephants and bison. Tell you what. Before "re-wilding" with the real things, why not follow the example of the new town of Milton Keynes when it first introduced its inner-city overspill residents to dangerous-looking beasts such as cows? After MK's concrete friesians, bring on the concrete rhinos.

MEANWHILE, another bunch of scientists have dug up a giant virus more than 30,000 years old from the frozen soil in Siberia. Hands up, all those who would rather like them to bury it again. Some scientists, like naughty little boys in a sandpit, should never be trusted with a spade.

LIKE tom cats spraying their territory, one of our local cyclist groups has staked its claim to a lamp post outside a cafe, permanently adorning it with an unsightly bracelet of their bike chains and padlocks. It occurs to me, in mischievous moments, that one could get a lot of innocent amusement by using just one more padlock, to lock all the others together.

IN ITS own little way, the Ash Wednesday edition of Thought for the Day (Radio 4) was as significant as Moses bringing down the tablets or Martin Luther falling out with the Vatican. It featured a prominent Anglican priest announcing there is no life after death. You pop your clogs and that's it, folks. You might imagine in the Lenten build-up to Easter that Canon Angela Tilby would offer a few words about the empty tomb, the risen Lord, the life everlasting and all that stuff. Nope. Her message (which you can hear again on iPlayer) was that we come from dust and go to dust, that death is "the loss of everything" and "we are all afraid of death and its finality." I wonder how many Christians were listening to their radios and whispering: "Yes, but . . . " waiting for something a wee bit more positive and, dare I say it, religious from the canon. Instead, they got a three-minute lecture that Richard Dawkins would have been proud to deliver. If this is what passes for religion these days, it doesn't leave much room for us atheists, does it?

I WROTE recently about the crates of whisky plundered from a shipwreck in 1941 which were buried in the Hebrides and then forgotten. A reader points out that these whiskies will not have improved over the past 73 years because the spirit ages only when it is in wooden barrels. However, some whisky experts disagree. And even if the spirit doesn't improve, it may well be distinctly different from modern whisky because, as with so many things, they don't make it like that any more. I can't help thinking that if you happened to dig up a case of free whisky, it would taste like nectar. Saving money is always sweet.

GRAMMAR corner. I referred a few days ago to my plan "to boldly sail" on Loch Lomond. A reader writes: "Peter, do I detect your first split infinitive?" No, sir, you do not. You detect a light-hearted allusion to Star Trek whose five-year mission was "to boldly go."

ADMITTEDLY, in classical English, nothing should come between "to" and the verb. One should either write "to go boldly" or "boldly to go." The American colonists, having left England before we got all precious about the split infinitive, see nothing wrong in "to boldly go." And while I generally avoid splitting the wretched thing, a split infinitive is sometimes unavoidable – for example, the court report in which the accused attempted "to sexually assault" her. There is a golden rule of grammar which states that if something looks stupid, avoid it – even if it means splitting that precious infinitive. No-one dies.