Peter Rhodes: Not such a shock?

OXYMORONS in a damp climate. A reader tells me he has been on a "camping holiday."

RESEARCHERS at Harvard University say if we start each day with a big bowl of porridge we may live longer. It will certainly seem longer.

ONE pundit asks, if Britain were not already a member of the European Union, would we seriously consider joining it now? Well, we might overlook the shambles of the Eurozone, the bullying of Greece, the unelected power of the Commission and the migration rules giving 500 million Europeans free access to the UK. But at the very least we would ask the first question raised by anybody who ever bought into a company: "May we see your audited accounts for the past few years . . .?"

PEDANT corner. Okay, technically the EU accounts are audited annually. It's just that every year they find a few million euros have vanished - and pretend everything is fine.

IN a recent item on synaesthesia, the condition which jumbles up the senses, I suggested that Wednesdays were yellow. A reader insists they are blue. Damn this colour blindness.

ONE headline on this week's revelations about Clement Freud was: "Shocked widow says sorry to her husband's victims." In fact, Lady Freud apologised quickly and did not seem in the least shocked. I fear this will run and run.

I'M already missing Ben Elton's comedy series, Upstart Crow (BBC2) starring David Mitchell as the yet-to-be-famous Shakespeare, bouncing half-formed speeches and sonnets off his unappreciative friends and family. Pitching it right is all important. Elton kept the in-jokes at an Eng Lit level most of us could understand: GCSE useful, PhD not required.

BUT quite why Ben Elton gave Shakespeare's family Birmingham accents is anyone's guess. Shakespeare came from Warwickshire so it's likely his family spoke with a rural Warwickshire accent. Could it be, forsooth, that Elton, like so many Londoners, simply thinks Brummies are good for a cheap laugh?

A LADY writes to thank me for last week's tip about drinking gin and tonic with a slice of cucumber rather than lemon. She says: "I tried it and cannot see a time, especially in the summer when I shall return to gin and tonic with lemon." You might expect me to toast her conversion with a nice long G&T. Not a chance. Gin is on a list of things (fruit machines, Toblerone, cream cakes etc) I do not trust myself with. A bottle of whisky may last me a year but gin seems to evaporate overnight.

AND finally, the hour approaches. By this time next week the nation will have voted to Leave or Remain in the European Union. If you've missed the arguments, here's a quick summary. If we vote Leave, income tax will go up, pensions will be cut, a plague of locusts will descend and we get Michael Gove as prime minister. If we vote Remain, our kettles will stop working, all bananas will be straight and a million Turks will arrive at Dover next weekend. Good luck.