Peter Rhodes: A pair of sparkling eyes

TWO years ago we switched off our central heating in March. Last year we switched it off ín April. This year it's so perishing that we still need it in May. Global warming, presumably.

FREEDOM of speech - don't you just love it? Isn't it somehow bracing to know we live in a society where someone can advocate the mass deportation of Jews and still get elected to Parliament? Oswald Mosley would have been so proud.

THE most worrying aspect of the Naz Shah affair is not how many Labour Party members may or may not be anti-semitic but how many British citizens are. In the General Election last year Shah stood for Labour in Bradford West and polled 19,977 votes, increasing Labour's share of the vote by four per cent. This was after she had posted on social media her suggestion that Israel be uprooted from the Middle East and transplanted to the United States. You might want to believe that any politician espousing such views, which Shah now calls "deeply offensive," would be shunned by British voters. Apparently not. And that's scary.

PEDANT corner. Jeremy Corbyn was wrong to suggest Shah had made "a fulsome apology." Fulsome means excessively flattering or insincerely earnest. It is not the same as full, which is presumably what Corbyn meant to say. Frankly, I expect better of a fellow grammar-school boy, innit?

STRANGE thing happened in the pub when the bench seat in the snug suddenly developed a pair of eyes. It was a small dog, jet black and shiny, perfectly camouflaged against the leather of the seat, until it woke up and those bright eyes shone. It turned out to be something called a Schnoodle, a cross between a miniature schnauzer and a poodle. I'm always glad my local is one of those pubs that still allows dogs in. You get such interesting company.

IF you're astonished, gobsmacked and frankly unbelieving that your offspring has landed a place at Oxford University, study this cautionary tale from Truro Crown Court. A woman of 34 convinced her parents she was studying for a doctorate at Oxford and over four years they gave her £250,000 towards her studies. She produced a letter from a tutor singing her praises and a draft sales contract offering £3 million for her academic work. It was all lies. The "student," now behind bars for fraud, was spending the loot on drugs, holidays and a secret marriage. So if your unpromising son or daughter announces they're off to a top uni and could you bung them a grand or two, you might ask a few searching questions. Does Oxford have a river? Is Inspector Morse still working there?

AS my Significant Birthday approaches, the number of mail shots from funeral-insurance companies increases. The small print always points out that I may end up with less than I have paid in. My local bookie offers similar terms.

I SUGGESTED last week that because succession to the British Crown is so hard to predict, we might end up with King Harry. I now realise this is an unforgivably transphobic comment and that HRH is, of course, entirely free to self-select his gender. It is revealed, too, that the prince wears women's tights while motorcycling. We may get Queen Harry.