Peter Rhodes: They can't resist an encore

HAVING spent the past three months snoozing on top of the stove, our old moggie peeled himself off, stretched his legs and spent all day patrolling his mile-wide territory. On the same day we bumped into an amiable old Beagle called Alfie who was lost and appreciated a walk home. Two skylarks ascended noisily from the meadow. A pair of canoodling Canada geese chased each other across the sky. The bunnies are racing around. Spring: the season for wanderlust.

WE knew Alfie's name because it was on his collar, next to his owner's phone number. This makes it easy to return a lost dog. But it also makes it easy to steal a dog and demand a ransom. Remember when we never had to worry about such things?

STRANGE to hear Sir John Major butting into the Brexit debate. This is presumably the same John Major who, on resigning as prime minister, declared: "When the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage and that is what I propose to do." They just can't resist an encore, can they?

THAMES Valley Police held a media event to promote the new tougher penalties for driving while using a mobile phone. One of the first drivers they nicked was an unnamed reporter - on her way to cover the event.

HOW to impress your friends with your edukashun. A tea tray for sale in Wilko carries the scholarly, dictionary-like definition "Tasty (noun): the delicious flavour of a homemade meal." As any real scholar knows, tasty is not a noun. It's an adjective. Go on, call me elitist.

THE Government has threatened to crack down on the great whiplash scandal. This would not only cut our motor-insurance premiums by about £40 but decimate the personal-claim industry. As I reported a few weeks ago, more than 44,000 people are employed in this ambulance-chasing business and an assault on fraudulent whiplash could see a quarter of such firms go bust. In a country run by lawyers for the benefit of lawyers, this is clearly unthinkable. It is, of course, pure coincidence that the Justice Secretary Liz Truss has just announced a new way of calculating compensation for road injuries which will hike our premiums by £300 and increase payouts for victims – and for their lawyers, too. The legal industry is said to be delighted. I bet.

IN a whimsical moment last week I suggested that the initials LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), already expanded to LGBTIQAA in some quarters, might one day become extended even further, incorporating the longest place name in Wales (LLANFAIRPWLLGWYN etc, etc), so as not to exclude anyone. We're not quite there yet but news reaches me of a college in the United States where the initials LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM are already in use. This one will run and run.

A SURVEY by the Royal Society of Literature, one of the many organisations I've never heard of, says one Briton in four has not read "a literary work" in the past six months. Depends what you call literary, innit? Somebody once defined journalism as "literature in a hurry," so if you're digesting this, consider yourself well-read.