Peter Rhodes on puzzling weather, recurring words and the high price of medical curiosity

Research from Germany suggests that as we grow older, our definition of when old age begins grows later. Thus, a generation ago old age was reckoned to begin at 71 but now the agreed figure among older folk is 74. This presumably means we remain middle-aged until our mid-70s which in turn suggests we expect to live to 140. The figures may be dodgy but you can't fault the optimism.

Some words are like buses. You go for ages without using them and then suddenly several references come along at once. I referred last Friday to an app for measuring the amount of Baileys liqueur left in the opaque black bottle. Just four days later Baileys cropped up in the news again, when a businessman sued BA after slipping on a patch of spilt Baileys at Heathrow. The case gives me an opportunity to bin a stray apostrophe. The creamy stuff is Baileys, not as I suggested Bailey's.

The Sunday Times “Bloody Disgrace” campaign alleges patients died after being deliberately infected with contaminated blood plasma in the 1970s and 1980s. Could such a thing happen in the NHS at the hands of doctors, in the name of research? I wouldn't be surprised. Some years ago I interviewed a number of women who, “unwilling and uninformed” in the 1960s, were injected with the mind-bending drug LSD in the hope it might cure their post-natal depression (it didn't). They were later awarded compensation. One woman told me she vividly remembered the exact words the doctor used as he approached her with a syringe of LSD: “Let's see what this does.”

“Nothing must come between a parliamentary lifer and his subsidised tapioca pudding.” Westminster sketch writer Quentin Letts describing the House of Lords adjourning for supper this week.