Peter Rhodes: Season of swallows and spud hawks

May 3: the young cattle are turned out of their barns and into the meadow down the lane, skipping and jumping like day-old antelopes. May 4: the swallows arrive back in our yard, merrily dive-bombing the cat. Spring - better late than never.

IS it over? Is it safe to come out? Can we switch on the telly or radio without being bombarded with Leicester City overkill? When this once-restrained nation of ours reaches the stage when the Daily Telegraph announces: "Leicester: the centre of the universe" and "Conquerors of the world" you know things have gone too far and the game has made a quantum leap from football to hyperball.

ONE of the most irritating things about being a football fan is those fair-weather fans who turn up with flags, rattles and scarves when things are going well and are never to be seen in the hard times. I recall a TV interview with a fan from some Northern club which had just emerged from obscurity into the dizzying heights of mediocrity. The point he was making was that he had never, ever missed a match. "I'm a die-hard, I am," he exclaimed and suddenly burst into tears, overwhelmed by his own dedication. The Good Lord, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, made me entirely without the football gene, for which I am truly thankful.

TIME to make your potato hawks. Take one spud, several feathers and some bits of coal for the eyes and nose. Get it right and it will scare the birds off your vegetable patch. Get it wrong, and the pigeons will laugh at it.

I HAVE a friend whose most vivid memory of the 1962 Cuban crisis was of a 10-year-old classmate coming to school in tears because "Daddy says we'll all be dead by tonight." What sort of adult says such a terrible thing in front of an impressionable child? Probably the same sort of adult who claims their kids are scared and stressed out by school tests. Adults have infinite power to plant ideas in the minds of trustful children. Tell your kids the school tests are a breeze and a bit of a game and they'll look forward to them. Imprint your own prejudices on them and the kids will be worried to death.

IT is an old newspaper tradition that we cannot enjoy a few balmy days without sneering at foreign places. A junior hack is ordered to scour the weather charts and find somewhere colder than England, hence this week's headlines "We're hotter than Istanbul" and suchlike. I recall (far away and long ago, you understand) a bit of a kerfuffle when the junior was reprimanded for choosing South Africa for his midsummer report. It was headlined: "We're hotter than Cape Town" which , as the editor pointed out, was hardly surprising, given that Cape Town was in the southern hemisphere and in the depths of winter.

WE may never agree on whether to stay in the EU or leave. But can we at least agree to quit the Eurovision Song Contest? Spending one night a year in the company of people who take it seriously is too much for any self-respecting nation to endure.