An emotional wrangle at Downton

A READER points out that in my Monday's piece on Chromebooks "no working parts" should read "no moving parts," "no memory" should read "no built-in storage" and "no viruses" should read "although these machines are very safe, they are not 100 per cent virus-proof." I am hugely obliged.

PEDANTRY. There ought to be fewer of it.

MEANWHILE, on the far more serious issue of old-fashioned pyjamas (why do they have a breast pocket, etc?), a reader asks why they come with the type of shirt collar that normally goes with a tie. Is it, he asks, for the sort of chap who goes sleepwalking into posh restaurants?

ANACHRONISM Abbey. More 2015 terms allegedly spoken at Downton in 1925. Walking alone is "so liberating." Having a local hospital is "a huge plus." One character has been "put through an emotional wrangle." Not to mention the repeated use of the word "pregnant" which was a medical term in those days and not used in polite chat.

SO how did the cops know this Indian summer was coming? A reader tells of the crime-prevention leaflet which dropped through his letterbox last week. It began: "Dear Sir/Madam, as the warmer months approach we normally see a slight increase in shed burglaries. . ."

AND what a gloriously unseasonal spell it is. As the brassy sun slipped toward the horizon, I was steering a mate's yacht into a creek on a big, blowy English lake. And before all you hair-shirt Corbynistas denounce me for toffish behaviour and start oiling the tumbril, let me explain that the yacht is tiny, it cost £500 and its sanitary arrangements are usually described as bucket-and-chuckit. This is an old, overgrown dinghy, not a gin palace and it slapped merrily though a million sun-gilded wavelets as we tacked against a spirited breeze, zig-zagging toward the moorings. "Good sailing," said the skipper of a cream-sailed lugger, gliding past the easy way with his electric motor whirring. Vast carpets of gulls who thought they had settled for the night, took off, complaining noisily as our boat ploughed through their water and slipped into haven. The sun kissed the forest fringe and the evening turned instantly cold. Our biblical lifespan is about 25,500 days, but how many days do we remember like this one? Get out there and enjoy it before autumn bites.

TALKING of water, guess how much the most expensive bottled water in the world costs. Leaving aside one £40,000 product which comes in a solid gold bottle, you can expect to pay between £3 and £300 per bottle for the world's 10 most exclusive mineral waters, some refined from glaciers, others extracted from remote springs. Some restaurants have even appointed "water sommeliers" to help customers choose exactly the right stuff. There seems virtually no limit to how much some suckers will pay for H20. And if that's what they'll pay for Earth's water, imagine what they might shell out for a bottle that has come half-way across the solar system. This week scientists revealed evidence of water on Mars. If they can only bottle the stuff the next Mars mission could pay for itself.

STILL on fluids, you may have raised an eye at the winner of Harvard University's annual Ig Nobel awards for genuine scientific research intended to make us smile. It was the "universal urination duration" study which claimed that all mammals weighing more than 3kg take about 21 seconds to empty their bladder. Ever the sceptic, I put the stopwatch on our 6.5kg moggie. Thirty-five seconds. Back to the lab, lads.