Peter Rhodes: Of poets and princes

YES, I know that profit margins are tight, competition is ruthless and the supermarkets need every snappy sales slogan the kids in marketing can come up with. But "fun-sized apples" in my local supermarket? For goodness' sake.

I WROTE a few days ago that I had never heard anyone begrudge Peter Kay his £40 million fortune. Sure enough, one begrudging reader chimes in: "£40 million pounds is too much money for any one person to own in a fair society, where there still exists deprivation and want." I would have thought that the money willingly paid by fans to see Kay has been recycled by the taxman to alleviate quite a lot of deprivation and want.

TRY as I may, I cannot remember a single Prince hit or hum one of his tunes. I suspect this is because he was rising to fame at about the same time as we were raising a toddler and, as any parent will confirm, your musical interests suddenly change. I may not know any Prince songs but I do know all the words to The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.

AND so off to Stratford to join the world celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death which, if you think about it, is an odd sort of event to celebrate. We got there bright and early and headed straight for our secret parking place by the Avon which turned out to be a secret shared with dozens of other motorists. By the end of the day it was grossly overparked by idiots who either see nothing wrong in blocking-in other drivers, or never worry about their cars getting scratched or their noses getting punched.

AT every Shakespeare Festival you will bump into at least one celebrity. This time it was Ian McMillan. The name may not mean much (I couldn't for the life of me remember it) but if I say "Yorkshire poet," you'll know the bloke. White hair, big specs and the sort of ecky-thoomp Barnsley accent that my grandmother, who lived all her life in a West Riding mill village, would have called "reet broad." McMillan was delighted to be recording his radio show at the festival and we chatted in the sunshine about the weather and trains. He doesn't drive but travels everywhere by rail. Because he has to make allowance for connections and suchlike, he tends to turn up for gigs two hours early. I told him how, years ago at the Shakespeare Festival luncheon, I found myself seated next to another chatty Yorkshireman who turned out to be J B Priestley. McMillan seemed impressed.

THE biggest success of our day was slipping into Sheep Street as the parade passed by, finding a table in a sun-soaked little cafe courtyard and ordering a meal. Ten minutes later the hordes descended and the place was heaving with people fighting for seats as we smugly tucked into mozarella and parma ham. Life, as Shakespeare probably said, is all about timing.

I WROTE last week about how cats hate change. If you believe everything you see on YouTube, they are also terrified of cucumbers. A succession of online cats leap into the air at the sight of one. Being out of cucumbers, we ambushed our moggie with the closest thing we could find. I can report that cats are not in the least scared of courgettes.