Peter Rhodes: Ignoring crime

AS Storm Ophelia blows off into the North Sea and we pick up the pieces, give thanks for that hate-icon of our age, the wheelie bin. By and large, the worst a wheelie bin can do in a gale is blow over. In contrast, the old galvanised dustbin lid became airborne. In some storms, hundreds of them would be flying around like deadly discuses. A couple of bin lids in a car park could wreck dozens of cars in a matter of minutes.

IT was bracing this week to hear that old EU enthusiast and former Chancellor Ken Clarke pressing for the best possible post-Brexit deal on fighting crime across Europe. What a shame it came on the same day that the Metropolitan Police announced it will stop investigating some "low level" crimes in London, including burglaries, thefts and assaults. So that's police co-operation to fight crime all across Europe. Except in London.

A READER took me to task some days ago over my views on employing tradesman. He pointed out that "real men" fix their own fences and do their own electrical repairs. It is a long time since I gave up DIY wiring (you may have seen the flash). I have, however, just polished my real-man credentials by replacing 20 yards of gutters at Chateau Rhodes. The scale alone is impressive. I can't think of the last time I did 20 yards of anything.

I BOUGHT the guttering parts on eBay. You would think, as the 10 parcels of bits were all bought in one batch, that eBay would settle for one set of feedback. Fat chance. We live in an age of unlimited feedback. There is not a gizmo in existence that has not been thoroughly praised or denounced by the worldwide community of online shoppers. I told eBay that the gutters "seem fine," the non-committal phrase I always use for feedback. The stop-ends were "seem fine" too, And so were the downpipes, downpipe fixers, gutter joints, 90-degree bends, and all the rest. I posted a positive blizzard of "seem fine." You might imagine this would satisfy the brave new world of feedback. Not so. More tomorrow.

A READER challenges my assertion that Princess Anne would favour culling badgers even if there were no connection to bovine TB. Judge for yourself. This is what HRH said on Countryfile (BBC) in 2014, asked whether she believed there was too much sentimentality surrounding badgers: "If there are a lot of badgers you’re going to have no hedgehogs, probably no wild bees and fewer ground nesting birds. If you took the cattle completely out of this debate, from a conservation issue alone you’d have to say there are too many badgers.” If that's not royal approval for a cull, what is?

FOLLOWING my recent item on detectorists, a reader reports an exciting day on the urban fringe. Her metal detector gave a sudden strong signal and the digging began. She dug with her spade. Her friend dug with his spade. After several minutes they uncovered their find. It was a spade.