Going backwards, ambitiously

QUOTE of the week. "I'd better start cutting down on the food bill, then." Pensioner Doug Yeomans of Derbyshire after receiving a demand from the taxman for £4.7 billion. HMRC have apologised for the error.

THE much-counterfeited £1 coin is due to be replaced in 2017 with a 12-sided coin which is reckoned to be almost impossible to copy. It was reported a few days ago that one gang alone is responsible for 30 million fake coins in circulation. Before the £1 coin was introduced back in 1983 to replace the £1 note there were grave reservations about it. One wag, taking a swipe at the then prime minister, said the coin should be called the Thatcher because it was "thick, brassy and wanted to be a sovereign."

WAY back in ye olden days we kids were expected to know our times tables by the time we left infant school at seven. We learned them by reciting them by rote. The latest plan, to teach kids their times tables by the age of 11, was described this week as "ambitious."

AND while we're on the subject. In primary school, we 1950s kids understood verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs. We did long division and multiplication. We did nature study and art, history, geography and PE. We sang sea shanties around the piano and did country dancing to the wireless. We could recite the Magnificat and the Beatitudes. And we were never, ever given any homework.

MRS Rhodes has been unusually quiet since yuletide, engrossed in her Christmas book, H is for Hawk, which has won the Costa Book of the Year award. Helen Macdonald's tale of training a goshawk to help overcome her grief at her father's death is a vivid and enthralling read, making the point that, of all the hawks, the goshawk is the most savage and challenging. If Macdonald had wanted an easier life she'd definitely have chosen another bird. But who's going to buy B is for Budgie?

THE head of Barclays, Antony Jenkins, visited a school in London to stress the importance of social skills. He advised children to try the Barack Obama two-handed shake, placing the left hand on the other person's arm. Let me tell you this, kids. A two-handed shake, unless you happen to be the President of the United States of America, is deeply creepy. Which is what everyone at Barclays would probably tell Mr Jenkins, were he not the boss.

MY father bought a cine camera in 1960 and it is wonderful, 55 years on, to see the family growing up. But the most fascinating glimpses are those moments when the camera pans away from the family and captures fleeting images of our home town with all its long-gone little shops and ancient cars; a Hillman Minx here, a Vauxhall Cresta there. Fast forward to 2015 and some trippers at the lovely Cotswold village of Bibury are complaining that their photos of the mediaeval street are spoiled by the bright yellow Vauxhall Corsa owned by a local retired dentist. How very short-sighted. Half a century from now Bibury won't have changed but those who took photographs way back in 2015 will have an image of a beautiful vintage Corsa when all the Corsas have gone the way of all the Crestas. Wow, grandad, what a cool car. And whatever happened to cars, anyway?

INCIDENTALLY, the owner of the Corsa, Peter Maddox, is 82. If I'm whizzing around in a hot little hatchback at his age, I'll be content.