Peter Rhodes: A sentimental journey

I SAW this scrawled on a wall this week: "Carrie is a grass." Don't you find it strangely reassuring that in the age of cyber-crime and DNA profiling, our criminal-justice system still has a place for the good old-fashioned copper's nark?

SOME parts of the NHS are struggling but others are wonderful. A reader who needed an X-ray booked it for the same day at his local hospital, turned up and was processed so quickly that he didn't even have to pay the car-park charge.

AS a fully paid-up guardian of Joe Public against the monstrous forces of government, I should be outraged at this week's news of new powers allowing Whitehall departments to share individuals' details with local councils. I find myself strangely unoutraged. If Mr J Public is pleading poverty to the town hall to get benefits but HMRC knows he is a millionaire, the sooner the taxman has a word with the town clerk, the better.

IN any case, didn't we all assume they were sharing information already?

I TOOK a sentimental New Year stroll around Leamington Spa, past my old schools, our Methodist chapel, the cinema, bandstand and all the other landmarks of youth. This time, I couldn't help noticing how many of Leamington's grand Regency dreams came to nothing, and wondering whether there is a warning from history about today's housing crisis. Back in the 1840s Leamington was a booming spa town. Speculative builders thought the money would roll in for ever. But the nation lost its taste for smelly, salty water and the Regency building style, founded on the columns and pediments of ancient Greece and Rome, fell out of fashion. Huge, ambitious crescents were abandoned and infilled with smaller modern semis. Sic transit gloria thingummy.

YOU see the same process in towns all over England where the maisonettes and tower blocks they think will solve their housing problems are obsolete and unwanted almost before the paint is dry. Today, the mantra on every politician's lips is "affordable starter homes," tiny rabbit hutches designed for tiny families. But who needs them, who can afford them and who will want them 20 years from now?

REPORTING on the housing crisis this week, BBC News introduced us to a family who needed a new council house because they had "outgrown" their flat. What this actually meant was that the parents had produced five children. So often, the important questions never get asked. Like, what happens to today's starter homes if families of seven become the norm?

AT least the old 19th century houses were easy to take down. I spent one summer as a labourer on the demolition of a huge Regency villa. There was no need to use a demolition ball, nor even a hammer or chisel. We simply lifted every brick by hand. There was no adhesive power in the powdery old mortar and the only thing holding each course of bricks in place was the weight of the bricks above. A bricklayer told me the old buildings remained standing only because all the woodworms were holding hands.