Express & Star

Peter Rhodes: Paying for the sunshine

A VERY very odd spring, the horror of Grenfell Tower and the precise meaning of “leave”

Published
And “leave” means?

AT 10am yesterday it was too hot to sit on the beach here in Beer. Exactly one week ago, we had to light a coal fire to get our house warm. In weather terms, bizarre is becoming the new normal.

IT is a strange, and very un-British thing that, between April and Midsummer Day I have had four warm, sunny holidays in the UK. Sunny in Cornwall, sunny on Loch Lomond, sunny for my sailing rally and now double-sunny with added scorchio in Devon. Is it only the English who become paranoid about having to pay for such bounty? Mark my words, August will be a stinker.

STANDING at the shore, you can feel the sea sucking the tickling sand from beneath your toes and you suddenly lose your footing. Let’s call it the Brexit Sensation. Only a year ago things on the EU front were blissfully simple. We had voted to leave. We knew where we stood and where we were heading. Today we are wrong-footed and bamboozled by endless descriptions of hard and soft Brexit scenarios. And this week came a new low. I caught a radio debate in which the pundits were, in all seriousness, examining what the Great British Public understood in the EU referendum by the word “leave.”

IN the meantime, can we at least drop the claim that young people have never involved themselves in politics until last week’s General Election? I had a friend at school all those years ago who attended a Conservative election meeting, refused to stand for the national anthem, told the furious Tories that he was an anti-monarchist and was duly chucked out. He was 15.

WHEN renting a holiday cottage, I always pack an extension socket lead, a decent portable radio and some reliable clothes pegs. To this list I have just added another item. While this cottage is beautifully decorated and graced with original paintings and sculpture, you never know what time it is. Pack a wall clock.

I WROTE some days ago about new research showing that being married is good for your health. Yesterday, on the cliff path from Beer to Branscombe, we met a man and his wife. He was wearing yellow shoes and white socks, as though he had a large egg on each foot. I thought spouses were supposed to stop that sort of thing.

AFTER the nightmarish fire in Kensington, the focus of most comment seems to be on how the fire spread up Grenfell Tower, with the new cladding allegedly acting like an external chimney and turning the building into something resembling a blast furnace. But there is another issue which must today be haunting anyone living in any sort of high-rise block, whether fitted with cladding or not. Assuming this fire began in one of the apartments, how could it possibly have escaped from what is essentially a sealed concrete box? The exterior finish of Grenfell Tower may be a key factor in this disaster but was there also an issue right at the heart of the building?