Be careful what you wish for

LAST week's trip to Hidcote Gardens, mixing with crowds of well-heeled pensioners, reminded me of the time, in a National Trust garden shop, when the lady in front told her friend: "I only want a tiny trial." For a split-second I assumed she'd done something wrong, was awaiting a day in court and hoped it was all over quickly. Turned out she wanted the trial for her gardening. Or trowel, as some of us call it. I bet she lives in a very big hice.

A FRIEND who runs a shop has been given notice to quit by his landlord who has been approached by another company prepared to pay twice the rent. The newcomer is a charity shop. It can afford to pay a huge rent because, as a registered charity, it gets a massive discount on business rates. So one charity prospers and one long-established shop, run by the sort of "hard-working people" Cameron and Miliband claim to cherish, is booted out. I don't suppose there's a charity for businesses made homeless by charities? Thought not.

ANOTHER strange encounter with a charity, this time in a mailshot to Chateau Rhodes inviting us to donate £2 a month to do good in Africa. We're not interested in signing up to direct debit but would like to donate something. But we can't. There is no way you can make a one-off payment to this charity without disclosing your name, address and income-tax status. Call me a cynic but I bet they're not really after our £2 a month. They're after our personal details.

APOLOGISING for snorting cocaine in Buckingham Palace and other places, Stephen Fry declares: "I take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly to the owners, managers or representatives of the noble and ignoble premises and to the hundreds of private homes, offices, car dashboards, tables, mantelpieces and available polished surfaces that could so easily have been added to this list of shame." Which is rather a long way of saying: "Look at me! Look at me! And please buy my new book."

FRY is like Fairy Liquid. Don't you find a little goes an awfully long way?

ON the issue of devolving power to the English regions, while the prospect of a "fair share" of the nation's wealth for each region sounds good, it might work out rather less than we think. Most of the wealth in Britain is created inside the M25. If that little region suddenly demanded home rule and the right to spend its own money, the rest of us would starve. Be careful what you wish for.

AND look closely, too, at the proposed English regions which have been drawn up in Brussels. Cheltenham finds itself in the South-West. I would not mind betting that this elegant Midland city would rather be governed from London, just down the M4, than lumped into a self-governing statelet with those separatist headbangers in Cornwall.

REFERRING to Tesco's mislaid £250 million, a reader inquires whether the people responsible will turn out to be "those incredibly important and irreplaceable City types who (we are told) have to be paid telephone-number salaries, with tax-reducing sweeteners, in order that their vast talent is not lost to our nation." I fear so.

MEANWHILE, watch out for The 45. This is the movement set up online after the Scottish referendum which is determined to keep up the fight. It takes its name from the 45 per cent who voted Yes and has echoes of Bonnie Prince Charlie's 1745 rebellion.. The 45 is a catchy name. So much better than The Bad Losers.