Peter Rhodes: Money cannot buy happiness but it can buy cake

“MONEY cannot buy happiness but it can buy cake, which is pretty much the same.” One day I dare say all the wisdom of the world will be scrawled on the walls of chic little cafes like this one in the Devon fishing village of Beer. Wall-wisdom has taken over from wallpaper.

BUT it has to be the right sort of wisdom. The much-loved pub across the road, now gentrified and stripped of such rudeness, displayed for many years a poster with these words in praise of ale: “Beer - helping ugly people have sex since 1647.” Politically incorrect on so many levels.

WE are staying in a very upmarket holiday cottage, one we have never used before. It is all scrubbed plank floors, Belfast sinks and paintwork in subtle shades of grey by Farrer & Cobblers. As you may have noticed, grey is the new magnolia.

THE cottage also has proper taps which I regard as a small success for my Campaign for the Restoration of Authentic Plumbing, a movement never known by its initials. Real taps mean you can wash your face in a sink without bashing your forehead on a massive, scald-or-freeze mixer tap. Rejoice, for we may have reached peak monobloc.

MEANWHILE, we are still digesting last week’s General Election, the one in which Theresa May lost 12 Tories but discovered 10 Irish folk. When all the dust and spittle settles, it appears that the General Election of 2017 has delivered a House of Commons with more women and ethnic minorities than ever before, and the poll included a record number of young voters. So don’t tell us it was entirely a waste of time.

THE next general election could be five years away and many of the elderly voters who were terrified at the prospect of Corbyn’s “garden tax” will have passed on to that great raised bed in the sky. However, those students who know absolutely nothing about the garden tax but thought Corbyn might pay off their university debts (so sweet, so trusting), will have matured and moved on and acquired all sorts of things. Including gardens. Nothing takes the edge off your socialist fervour quite like a lawnmower.

INCIDENTALLY, these pundits telling us that Theresa May was a wooden, uninspiring, dull-as-ditchwater, crowd-avoiding no-hoper with the worst election manifesto since 1066. Where were they two weeks ago?

ON the drive down to Devon, Mrs Rhodes and I were discussing the holiday guest houses of our youth and that universal fixture of refined hospitality, the dinner gong. They were kept in the hall and would be sounded to announce the evening meal to the guests. There was a great art to sounding a dinner gong properly. A series of swift, firm blows produced a gathering crescendo and made the taste buds spring to attention.

BY chance, mooching around the village antique shop yesterday we found an old dinner gong. Giving it a series of gentle blows with the beater, I became instantly hungry.