How (not) to celebrate St George's Day

HEADLINES of the future. April 22, 2035. Sir John Chilcot, aged 95, announces he is at last ready to release his long-awaited report into the Iraq War but, unfortunately, cannot remember where he put it. Lord Janner (106) says he entirely understands.

LET us celebrate St George's Day tomorrow in true English style. Let us not wear fancy dress. Let us not sing patriotic songs, march through the streets or fly our national flag. Why not? Because those are the sort of things that foreigners do.

IF we are in for a long hot summer, as some experts forecast, there will be winners and losers. The winners will be the lucky ones whose fetes and garden parties fall on long, shimmering summer days. The losers will be those poor devils whose outdoor events, carefully planned months in advance, coincide with the only downpour of the season. It is part of the British character that we respond to such things by declaring stoically: "The rain didn't dampen our spirits." Ah, but it does. Rain dampens everything and if your spirits are not thoroughly drenched then there is something seriously wrong with you. This summer, in the puddly aftermath of disappointment, let us ban all claims of undampened spirits.

MEANWHILE, the war against prepositions goes on. The creeping Americanisation of English which has given us truly awful constructions such as "appeal the verdict" and "protest the decision" continues with Ed Miliband issuing the challenge to David Cameron: "Debate me." This, from a politician who, two weeks from now, could be responsible for every state school in Britain. I recall an exchange some time ago between two friends when one invited the other: "Why don't you call me Tuesday?" and the other replied: "Okay. You're Tuesday."

A FRIEND has been nicked for speeding on a section of a motorway he uses every day where the limit had been changed to a variable system and so-called "stealth" cameras are operating. The speeding ticket took two weeks to arrive and to his horror, it struck him that if he had been nicked once, he must surely have been caught many times. After all, he drove at the same speed on Monday as he did on Tuesday, Wednesday and every other day. So how many more tickets were being processed or in the post? How many penalty points were on the way? How long before he was banned? He contacted the authorities and, to his relief – and astonishment - was told this was the only ticket. So was he just lucky? Or is the system designed to limit the number of speeding tickets sent to a single driver? After all, if they disqualified too many motorists, where would their loot come from?

I RAISED the above question with the oracle, an old mate who is a retired traffic cop. "You know, I've often wondered about that myself," he replied. Oracles are not what they used to be.

BEN Affleck stands accused of asking the makers of a genealogy show to remove a reference to his ancestors who owned slaves. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. We may assume the Hollywood megastar is embarrassed by his family's past but it could simply be that he's terrified of getting a letter from some sharp human-rights lawyer demanding millions of dollars in compensation on behalf of the slaves' descendants.

THE Affleck affair reminds me of a very old ancestry joke. What's the difference between genealogists and Goldilocks? Genealogists are interested in forbears.