Peter Rhodes on gritty guano, private palaces and the unexpected utterances of a recreated mammoth

Useful things you never knew about seagull poo. On our holiday in Devon, a local who seemed to know his stuff, pointed out that, as seagulls have a diet of crabs, mussels, limpets and other things living in shells, their excrement is full of shell-chips and highly abrasive. This means the worst thing you can do if you find your car anointed with guano is to rub it vigorously with a cloth.

As the local explained: “I've just watched a bloke taking the shine off his Jaguar.” You have been warned.

Meanwhile, still on motoring matters, weekend reports tell us that roadside detection cameras “misread” about a million number plates every day, in many cases because the plates have been doctored by “dimming” technology. This means many millions of speeders, light-jumpers, emission-dodgers and other miscreants cannot be traced and prosecuted, at least not without old-fashioned bobbies checking the plates of parked vehicles. And when did anyone last see an old-fashioned bobby?

One day scientists working with DNA from frozen woolly mammoths, may recreate the real thing. The bad news is that boffins have discovered that some of the last-surviving mammoths had “mildly harmful mutations.” With what consequences?

I have a troubling vision of the first mammoth in 40,000 years being delivered in a laboratory. As the scientists say “Wow!” the hairy little mammoth says “Miaow . . .”