Peter Rhodes: Happy Christmas, Mr Putin?

I AWOKE this week to hear the weather forecaster referring to "The Festive Fortnight." Is this in addition to the 12 Days of Christmas, or what?

A READER wonders how it could be that, during the wartime blackout in 1943, all the lights are blazing at the US military base in My Mother and Other Strangers (BBC1) which is set in Northern Ireland. Where is Warden Hodges when you need him?

THERE is another question raised by the series. Can the loyal-but-tempted mother Rose (Hattie Morahan) do any expression other than startled?

AS Christmas 1971 approached, John Lennon and Yoko Ono released Happy Xmas (War is Over). It seemed timely. America was withdrawing troops from Vietnam. There was hope of a negotiated settlement. But it is easier to sing about peace than deliver it. The North launched a full-scale invasion and by 1975 the US-backed forces of South Vietnam crumbled. Vladimir Putin was probably hoping for a "War is Over" sort of Xmas this year, as the Syrian city of Aleppo was re-taken. But IS forces have regrouped and stormed back into the ancient city of Palmyra. I would not be surprised if Mr Putin's Syrian adventure sees Russian forces bogged down for the next 20 years. Damascus, twinned with Saigon.

AFTER last week's item on the paperless office, a friend admits his filing system collapsed under the weight of paper some years ago. He now calls it his piling system.

WHEN a river floods, you get some warning and can blame it on God, global warming, or other things beyond our control. But when a massive water main bursts, the flood is instantaneous and the blame lies squarely with the water companies. Three times in the past few days, biblical-scale floods have overwhelmed parts of London. Homes in Islington were flooded six feet deep in what one resident called "a tsunami in the back garden." The water company says: "It was our pipe and it is our responsibility to put things right." But when? Elsewhere in Britain, flooding caused by nature has left some folk homeless for more than a year. Is it too much to hope that innocent victims of human error are helped much sooner?

AFTER the Lost Chord, the Lost Joke. I have a friend who tells jokes in the way that other people draw breath. It is full-on, non-stop and, by his own admission, most of his jokes (and all of his puns) are terrible. And then, a few days ago, he cracked one that was so belly-bustingly brilliant that both of us were cackling helplessly. I have not laughed so much since the cat fell off the mantelpiece. You'd like to hear the joke? Me, too. But both of us have forgotten it. It has become the Lost Joke and, thanks to the way memory works, the more you try to draw it back, the further it goes, like a marble sinking into a vat of molasses. The only consolation we cling to is that if we heard it again maybe it wouldn't be that funny after all.

AFTER last week's item on pansexuals a reader asks, isn't it awfully noisy? Apparently not. Pansexuality has nothing to do with saucepans, skillets, casseroles or any other form of pots and pans. Happy to clear that up.