Peter Rhodes: What did Iceland used to be called?

MORE priceless baloney from the bad-loser tendency, still arguing the case for a re-run of the EU referendum. A Guardian reader writes plaintively: "Most of us have been taken in at a low point by an opportunist. That is why you have the legal right to change your mind when you buy stuff over the Internet or enter into a double-glazing contract."

SO democracy should be more like buying double glazing, eh? Maybe we could get shouty Jeff Brown, the intensely irritating star of the Safestyle Windows TV ads, to explain to dimmer members of the electorate how it works: "You lose one referendum, you get another one free."

OUR changing language. I suggested a few weeks ago that a house I saw in Devon called "Trick's End" would have suited the late Paul Daniels. At the weekend a friend was cleaning out her car and found, lost down the side of a seat, a funeral order of service left by a previous owner six years ago. It marked the passing of an old and much-loved sailor. It ended with the John Masefield poem, Sea Fever and the lines: "And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,/ And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over." A search in an old dictionary reveals that "trick" was a nautical term for the spell of duty a man spent behind the helm. So "Trick's End" is nothing to do with magic but marks a sailor's farewell to the sea.

A GROUP of German politicians has suggested that young Britons disaffected by the Brexit vote could be granted dual British / German nationality. Warning: Kids, before taking dual nationality to preserve your EU credentials, remember that Europe has a tradition of compulsory national service. It may be suspended at present but who knows what the future may bring? If you think Brexit will muck up your glittering career plans, how about two years in the Luftwaffe?

IF the UK quits the European Union, the Common Agricultural Policy will no longer keep British farms afloat. So farming organisations have been asked to draw up their own preferred plans to show what a post-Brexit British Agricultural Policy might look like. I bet it will resemble a very large train constructed entirely of gravy.

BEN Wallace, Boris Johnson's former campaign manager, delivers this damning verdict on Michael Gove: "Michael seems to have an emotional need to gossip, particularly when drink is taken." That's the trouble with us hacks. Gove and his wife Sarah Vine are both journalists, part of a profession whose every instinct is to reveal, not conceal. Frankly, we are not very good at keeping secrets. I used to work with an old hack who, when asked the question: "Can I tell you something in confidence?" would reply: "I can assure you it will not go beyond the readers."

A READER tells me of his disappointment at his team losing in a pub quiz. It was the geography section that finished them: "We knew that Sri Lanka used to be Ceylon. We remembered that Zimbabwe used to be Rhodesia. We knew that Thailand used to be Siam. But we forgot that Iceland used to be Bejam."