Washing or washing up?

A READER is furious about the Poldark episode which included the alleged rape of Elizabeth. He writes: "You could drive a coach and horses through the health-and-safety policy at his tin mine."

WHICH naturally reminds me of the famous 1959 review in Field and Stream magazine of Lady Chatterley's Lover. After ploughing through page after page of red-hot sex, the writer concluded: "In this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J R Miller's Practical Gamekeeping."

SADLY, the Lady Chatterley item which is often quoted as a genuine review, was a spoof by the American humorist, angler and conservationist, Ed Zern.

OUR extended family has been staying for a few days. My niece, aged 11, was mildly shocked to be handed a mug which shows a fair-haired woman exclaiming: "Oh God, I'm so bloody blonde sometimes!" I can foresee a time when that mug will be as politically correct as a golliwog.

IT may come sooner than we think. Two activists are campaigning for the "rude and stereotypical" term "Essex girl" to be removed from the Oxford English Dictionary. At a time when racial "offence" is being extended to cover terms used within the UK such as Taffy, Paddy and Jock, not to mention hair colour, it was inevitable that jokes based on region or even county would come next.

BUT does anyone take county-based insults seriously? The only woman from Essex I know is thrilled to be called an Essex girl. We all love our county.

COUNTY pride. There is a moment in Shakespeare in Love when the Bard (Joseph Fiennes) finally admits to his actor friend Ned (Ben Affleck) that Ned's character, far from being the hero of the new play, is killed early on. Ned takes it bravely. Will tells him he is a gentleman. "And you," responds Ned, "are a Warwickshire ****house." We were watching the film in a cinema in Leamington Spa. At the mention of Warwickshire there was a great roar of approval. Whatever the context, we like to hear our counties getting a mention.

TALKING of offence, for the past 100 years the French have suffered the national humiliation of seeing their beautiful language being kicked into obscurity by the global spread of ghastly, gutteral English. No wonder that as the UK prepares to quit the EU, some French politicians are demanding that debates be held in French. Forget it, mes amis. French may be beautiful but it is a tricky language. They use the same verb for "like" as for "love," and when they "demand" something they may be merely requesting. If you inadvertently use the verb for kiss, you are actually proposing full sex, while someone requesting a kiss on the cheek will ask for "un smack," and you can see where that might lead. English may never sound as lovely as French but at least we never confuse a smacker with a good smacking.

AND what a wonderfully precise language English is. I once spent some time trying to explain to a German friend the difference between washing and washing-up. He could not quite grasp how the involvement of crockery, cutlery and Fairy Liquid was all implied by the one little word "up."