Peter Rhodes on bodger-builders, splitters in Labour and a sighting of the lesser-spotted dabber

AFTER my recent item on Mr O'Reilly, the bodger-builder in Fawlty Towers, a reader recalls a true encounter with a plumber who set to work installing a T-joint in a gas pipe to supply a gas fire in another room. When the job was done the customer eagerly lit a match (this was some years ago) and waited for the gas fire to light. After a few seconds of urgent hissing from the pipe, he was suddenly drenched to the skin. Wrong plumber. Wrong pipe.

I HAD a rare encounter on the M6 with the lesser-spotted dabber. They used to be quite common, dabbing their brakes and irritating everyone behind with the flashing of the brake lights, but seemed to have died out. And then one suddenly pops up, blinking his brake lights every few yards for no discernible reason, creating a ripple effect of lights flashing and braking behind him. This one was driving a Jaguar, making the point that quality cars do not always get quality drivers.

ON the face of it, Tom Watson's idea for a social-democratic group of MPs within the Labour Party is a recipe for inclusivity and harmony. While Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne and the rest of the hard Left would be raging against Israel and praising Marx in one room, Tom Watson would be chairing a meeting of soft-Left MPs getting all wistful about what a great bloke Harold Wilson was, and maybe Tone wasn't so bad, after all. And afterwards, Left and Right would all shake hands and boast about their broad kirk. Sadly, attempts to hold things together do not always work out. I am reminded of the days when English politicians convinced themselves that creating a Scottish parliament with devolved powers would make full independence look less unattractive. Some hope. Devolution, far from becoming the glue that bound the Union together, became a springboard for the Scottish Nationalists to demand independence. Today's party within a party becomes tomorrow's governing party. And if it were a genuine Social Democratic party led by Tom Watson it could be in power for the next 20 years. Of all the things Theresa May has to worry about, I bet this is the most worrisome.

WHEN the forecasters tell us that the mild spell in February is the sort of weather we usually get in May, we processs that information through the 2,000-year-old filter of religion. We cannot shake it off. Even we hard-boiled old atheists fear that any form of enjoyment must be balanced with suffering. "Lovely weather," you observe to the neighbours. "Oh, we'll have to pay for it," they reply darkly. So verily, brace thyself for a purgatory of much ice and snow and maybe even a return visit from that horned hobgoblin, Ye Beaste from the East.

BUT what if we don't have to pay for it? For all sorts of meteorological issues, 1816 is remembered as the year without a summer. Stand by for 2019 to become the year with no winter.