Peter Rhodes: Anyone for colour-blind snooker?

OUR trip to Yorkshire caught one of those wonderful Indian summer weekends. The Dales shimmered in the heat and canalside Skipton was as pretty as a little Venice and nowhere near as smelly.

WE stayed in a cottage by a swing-bridge on the Leeds & Liverpool canal and sipped chilled wine in a grime-stained stone courtyard as the narrowboats burbled by. What is it about boats? The moment people climb aboard they start waving at other people. If you were both on solid ground and this close, folk would think you mad. But bring a boat into the equation and the waving begins. Cooeey! Most odd.

I SPENT ages walking around Skipton clutching an important letter looking for a post box. They are dead easy to find, being painted in an arterial shade of red that even we colour-blind people can't miss. I finally found the box having walked past it several times. The authorities had decided to paint it gold to honour a local hero in the Paralympics. They might as well have put it under a camouflage net. You see the problem? You celebrate overcoming one disability and make life more difficult for those of us with another.

COME to think of it, there is no colour-blind section in the Paralympics. We have four years to put this right. Colour-blind snooker, anyone?

WE were in Yorkshire, as you may have read a few days back, to meet up with the extended family and pay tribute to Uncle Alvin who was killed on the Somme exactly 100 years ago. The event was neither showy nor maudlin, just the laying of a posy and a photograph at the village war memorial. And if 100 years seems a long time ago, consider this. The population is growing older and the number of centenarians increases by hundreds every year. Believe it or not, there are more than 14,000 British people alive today who were alive in September 1916 when Private Alvin Smith was alive. Not so long ago, after all.

YOU might imagine that this centenary year of the Somme would stick one or two historical facts in the nation's minds. On this week's University Challenge, four bright young things from Cambridge hadn't a clue when the Battle of the Somme began.

MEANWHILE, I was reminded once again why so many of us bought diesels when they were being promoted as the clean, green alternative to petrol. We may have claimed to be doing our bit to keep the carbon-dioxide down but there was a hint of thrift, too. To Yorkshire and back, my old banger averaged 56mpg.

THERE were too many idiotic driving moments to report them all but for sheer style the lorry driver who stopped, swung his wheel over and performed a three-point turn on the Skipton by-pass, blocking both lanes as the traffic slithered to a halt deserves a mention, as does the woman behind the wheel of a three-ton 4WD tearing along at 70mph on the M65 at Burnley, while busily texting. Somehow, they deserve each other.

HOW low interest rates work. A friend foolishly forgot to take a bag to the supermarket and had to buy a plastic bag for 5p. Which is exactly the monthly income on his savings account.