Peter Rhodes: Isolated? Us?

INTERESTING one for the coroner in the gripping Victorian ghost drama The Living and the Dead (BBC1). A ploughman ends his life by calling his plough horses towards him and letting them drag the blades over him. In the entire history of horse-powered farming, was there ever a case of suicide by plough?

ACTUALLY, I bet I know what verdict the coroner would return. As a trainee hack some years ago, I spent hours poring over the back issues of the newspaper, dating from 1806. Inquests were commonplace and the verdicts were predictable. In case after case the coroner solemnly recorded: "Death by the visitation of God."

I WOULD understand it if my wife sent me an email expressing reservations about Boris Johnson, like the one columnist Sarah Vine sent to her husband, the Tory MP and Brexit campaigner Michael Gove. I would sympathise if my wife pressed the wrong button and the email ended up in the public domain; these things happen. What any spouse would find hard to forgive is Vine's shrill use of capital letters in her email which reads: "One simple message: you MUST have SPECIFIC assurances from Boris OTHERWISE you cannot guarantee your support." Does Mr Gove enjoy being addressed like a particularly dim five-year-old?

THE mystery of why young people are so fond of the EU continues. In a matter of minutes on Tuesday evening, thousands of young people congregated in Westminster to demonstrate against Brexit. They claim to love the EU, but have they spoken to any young people from the south of the continent? Here in Britain, unemployment among the under-25s is only about 13 per cent. In Italy it is 39 per cent, in Spain 45.3 per cent and in Greece a shattering 48.9 per cent. The EU these British kids cherish has inflicted utter hopelessness on the youth of half a continent. You can use many adjectives to describe the EU, but not benevolent.

AND while the kids rage against racism and xenophobia in post-referendum Britain, what could be more racist or xenophobic than the EU immigration policy which says if you come from one of 28 white, nominally-Christian countries then you have unrestricted right to live and work in Britain but if you come from any other country you're at the back of the queue? How does that fit into a touchy-feely rainbow world?

A FORMER colleague who lives in France declares in a column that Britain is now "more isolated than ever." I can only refer her to that classic (and probably apocryphal) newspaper billboard: "Fog in the Channel – Continent Isolated."

YOU know how it is when you don't think you've heard the whole story? Bank of England Governor Mark Carney says the bank is ready to provide £250, 000 million of additional funds to support financial markets. So where did he suddenly find that? Down the back of the sofa?

MAYBE I shouldn't have asked for your sightings of men doing strange things in public loos (spray-painting the bike, etc). A reader describes seeing a bloke using the urinal while eating a bacon sandwich. Too much information, thanks. Mind you, it does disprove that old belief about men being unable to multi-task.