The trouble with collectors' items? No-one's collecting them

MIXED responses from readers on driver-awareness courses. One reader says the course he attended was excellent. Another declined to go, deeply resentful at having been nicked at just 35mph on a dual carriageway. But where is the statistical evidence proving that these courses are any more, or less, of a deterrent than the traditional fines and penalty points? We're waiting.

STILL on driving, I happened upon a car review for some sleekly low-slung new beast capable of 185mph and 0-60 in 2.8 seconds. If it were not for the German autobahns, there would be nowhere in Europe to unleash such power. So how is it that in an increasingly standardised continent, the Germans have managed to keep their stretches of speed-unlimited motorways? A German friend told me: "You English have your pound. We have our autobahns."

A READER suggested recently that deer straying on the highway would become the deer departed. Another reader offers a Latin version: Veni, vidi, venison (I came, I saw, I had road-kill dinner.)

ACCORDING to a survey, more than half of Brits planned to tackle a DIY job this week. So remember, there are two types of DIY jobs. The first is the easy-peasy, 10-minute job you're going to fit in just before teatime. By midnight you have broken three washers, ruptured a ballcock, cut through the lighting circuit with a craft knife, trodden on the cat and are on your knees on a carpet soaked in rusty water and plaster dust begging:"Why me, God?" The other type of DIY job is the one you know is utterly beyond your skills. For the week before, you lie awake at 3am, knowing it is all going to end in tears, despair, destruction and quite possibly divorce. And then you finally embark on The Huge Impossible Job, and it takes five minutes and you wonder what all the fuss was about. Fifteen years ago in an indulgent moment I constructed a corridor into my daughter's bedroom. Some time later we realised there was no way her decrepit old piano could be manoeuvred out of the corridor. It was sealed in her room like a mummy in a pyramid. And then one night a few weeks ago, sleepless and riven with doubt, I realised if I screwed four castors on to the side of that piano and summoned enough muscle power, it might just slip it around the corner of the corridor. It was surely impossible. But like so many Huge Impossible Jobs, it was done in minutes. Rejoice. I have reclaimed the bedroom. The piano, alas, had a nasty fall on the garden steps. It will never play again.

AND before anyone rushes to tell me that old pianos are valuable collectors' items, have a look at eBay. Bidding usually starts at 99p, buyer collects.

IT is a golden rule of possessions that nobody wants to collect your collectors' items. I have two old typewriters gathering dust in the shed because I haven't the heart to chuck them on a skip. "Wow," says friends. "They must be collectors' items." Maybe, but only if the collector has a strong back or plenty of money. In ye olden days, both typewriters and pianos were built to last. Weight was not an issue and transportation costs have risen. On eBay I found a nice little vintage Royal typewriter in the States, a snip at £29. Postage £81.

A SPOKESWOMAN explains that the aim of Wolverhampton University in opening an "African hub" on Mauritius (seriously) is "to further develop our course offer and grow student numbers." I wonder what that means in English.