Peter Rhodes: Click and kill

HOLIDAYMAKERS who were stuck, sweltering and frazzled, in the endless queues for the port at Dover were reportedly entertained by a Scout leader playing a banjo. Just when you think things can't get any worse...

SO it is now possible for a mentally ill teenager in Munich to buy a Glock handgun on the "darkweb," part of the internet accessible only with special software. Now, here's a coincidence. In February last year the Daily Mail investigated the darkweb and reported some of the items on offer: "A powerful Glock handgun . . . is on sale for just over nine bitcoins - around £1,300 - and comes equipped with two magazines. The seller promises to deliver anywhere in the world." Including Munich?

THE first Olympic teams arriving at Rio say the accommodation is unfinished and uninhabitable. Par for the course, then. Why this globetrotting godzilla of vanity and vested interests is allowed to trample one city into near-bankruptcy every four years, leaving a "legacy" of sub-standard homes and unwanted stadia, is a mystery. The Olympics should have a permanent home in Athens. That is where it belongs and if all the competing nations made a reasonable contribution, the Olympics could become a nice little earner for hard-up Greece.

I CAME across an old pub in Warwickshire with a smart new computer-produced sign on the front wall explaining its alleged connection with Shakespeare. You know it's computer-produced because in neat, inch-high letters it tells us the place "was frequently patronised by none other than William Shakespeare besides being able to design lecture series with the neighbouring universities." It is gibberish with knobs on. The computer has obviously grabbed an unrelated slab of text from some random document and inserted it into the sign. Years ago, at the dawn of the micro-chip age, someone told me that in a fraction of a second a computer could make a mistake that would take a team of men weeks. Here is the evidence. The bizarre thing is that even though the pub sign is complete nonsense, no-one has taken it down, presumably because no-one has read it.

USEFUL lessons for life. Avoid dark alleys at night. Steer well clear of online gambling. And most importantly, replace your kitchen as rarely as possible. Horrendously expensive, isn't it? If you want to know how profitable the kitchen-replacement business is, just look at the fabulous quality of the gorgeous, glossy brochures, dripping with overblown sales pitches. I love the promise that you will "stand out from the crowd with a statement tap." Not merely a tap, you will note, but a statement tap. We have a very small kitchen at Chateau Rhodes. So this crowd we are supposed to stand out from, where will it gather? Will people have to look in through the window in order to realise that we are standing out from them? I much preferred the old system when you had a hot tap and a cold tap and neither of them made a statement.

ONE brochure unblushingly informs us that kitchen units costing just £600 can be supplied and installed for £4,000. I know a private surgeon who charges less than that.

MEANWHILE, having spent some time on t'internet looking at sink units, I find my BT email inbox is now automatically displaying an advert for B&Q kitchens. How thoughtful / intrusive / clever / alarming / bloody cheeky (delete whatever).