Mole writes again

A READER, possibly having been stalked by the annuity vultures, tells me: "A financial expert is a person who explains to you tomorrow why what he predicted yesterday did not happen today."

I SUGGESTED Leicestershire's great chronicler, Adrian Mole, should have covered the interment of the bones of Richard III. In tribute to the lad, here goes: "Thursday, March 26. Leicester has gone mad. Crowds of chavvy-looking people queued to see King Richard's bones in a coffin which I find frankly gruesome. I told Pandora I couldn't see why people were making such a fuss of Richard III when they had totally ignored the other 110. To my surprise, she burst out laughing."

IT looks as though we won't have to worry about what sort of government we get after May 7. We will get whatever government the Scots want us to have. So what was Culloden all about?

PLINK! It's that time of year again when we boat owners drag our old vessels into the daylight, thread all the ropes through the gubbins at the top of the mast, haul the mast upright and are greeted, a couple of seconds later, by the sound of the free end of the rope shooting up one side of the mast. There is a metallic plink. The shackle, to which you are supposed to fasten the sail, is 20 feet above you, beyond reach. Having sprained yer back in raising the mast, there is no option but to take the damn thing down and start all over again. And again. And again.

ACTUALLY, there is one option. A pal who happens to be a vet, achieved it when I had a rope/mast malfunction with a hire boat on Loch Lomond years ago. He took two oars, a boathook, a wire coathanger and a roll of sticky tape and fashioned a 20-foot long device with a bent hook at the end. There was a stiff wind blowing, the top shackle was bouncing around and the odds against hooking its half-inch aperture with the wire hook looked enormous. And yet after a couple of sweeps, he did it. Rope recovered, sail attached and away we breezed. I told my wife the tale. "Well, he is a vet," she replied, enigmatically.

1: Alps Air crash "killed three Britons." 2: Jeremy Clarkson dropped from Top Gear. 3: PM apology over infected blood. The world's three biggest stories of the day, as listed by the BBC on Wednesday afternoon.

AND yes, I got it wrong. In March last year I wrote: " If Clarkson blacked-up and did an impression of Barack Obama singing The Sun Has Got His Hat On, he'd still be unsackable." But that was when we thought Clarkson's downfall might be caused by his mouth, not his fists.

WHAT really depressed me was the number of Brits prepared to excuse Clarkson anything simply because he is a celebrity they liked. I always thought it was part of the British character instinctively to stand up for little people against oafs. Apparently not.

GARDENING just got interesting. A US company is launching a domestic flame thrower capable of squirting blazing fuel 25 ft. Its creators claims it can eliminate weeds and kill insects. And for those awkward tree roots, a B-52, perhaps?