Peter Rhodes: Too old to be a granny?

MY mother-in-law used to reckon her premium bonds were stuck to the side of Ernie's tombola drum, which explained why they never came up. She may have been on to something. After months of zilch, I've just had four little wins in two days. Keep slapping that drum, lads.

MY first memory of my grandmother is when I was about seven and she was in her late 50s. She used to panic about losing me because I could run and she, worn out by a life of domestic service and cotton-mill drudgery, could not. Many women aged 80 today are fitter than my Gran was at 60. So I don't entirely understand the debate about modern grandparents being "too old" to care for their grandchildren, as a result of women delaying pregnancy into their 30s. In a column a few days ago, gynaecologist Dr Gillian Lockwood warned: "The traditional active granny and grandpa could become an endangered species." Maybe so. But is it all about health and fitness? Or do today's 70-plus generation have other agendas? When Gran and Grandpa explain: "We feel a little too tired to have the grandchildren next week" are they really saying: "We're off windsurfing in Lanzarote"?

I'M not entirely surprised about the child-abuse allegations against the late Clement Freud. He was known to be awkward, irritable and grumpy. If a man cannot control his temper, what else can't he control?

A READER accuses me of being out of touch with football. Thank you, sir. Kindest thing anyone has said for some time. In truth "out of touch" does not begin to cover my splendid ignorance and utter disdain for the game. I dislike it at every level, from the foul-mouthed dads screaming obscenities from the touchline at under-12 matches to the swaggering, criminally-overpaid thickos of the Premiership who regard date-rape as a right. I hate the way it infantilises men, creating hordes of petulant, ignorant, drunken Brit-babies who burst into tears when their team loses just like they did when they were nine, whose only interest and only topic of conversation is football, who can name every England squad member since the 1950s but can't tell you who the Chancellor is, who are permanently locked into the mind-set that England fans are just having a good time while foreign fans are hooligans. So let me tell you this: At least half the population of the UK doesn't give a damn about football, has no idea what the Euros are, finds the whole tournament vaguely embarrassing and couldn't care less who wins or loses. Oh, for goodness sake, stop blubbing.

WHATEVER this week's EU referendum brings, historians will only have to look at those images of the rival flotillas on the Thames led by Nigel Farage and Bob Geldof to understand why the nation was so divided. We are in fact two nations, the old and the new. Farage's boats were dirty little British coasters manned by older, horny-handed sons of toil. Geldof's big white gin palace carried a younger, multi-cultural assortment of metro media types and iPodders. Two tribes with absolutely nothing in common.

A READER says he is baffled that Microsoft has paid more than £18,000 million for LinkedIn, a company which has never made a profit. Is anyone else reminded of the Dotcom bubble of the 1990s when a new company could be valued in millions, even though the "company" was only a couple of teenagers with a laptop? That ended well, didn't it?