Switching off the grandparents

WE once had a young German lodger who asked, at our first meal, what was the English equivalent of “guten appetit!” We were stumped. We explained that as a rule the Brits do not expect dining to be something to enthuse about. Some years later, all is revealed in a postcard from Stratford-upon-Avon showing four nations at dinner. The French tuck into their moules with “Bon appetit!” The Germans attack their schnitzels with “Guten appetit!” The Italians wade into their Bolognaise with “Buon appetito!” And the English greet their meat and two veg with: “Never mind.”

A REPORT to the House of Lords says more than a third of over-80s avoid using cash points because of “pressure” from impatient, younger people in the queue behind them. These are presumably the old folk who first use the wrong card, then chuckle to everyone that they're always doing that, hahaha, and put the right card in but cannot remember the PIN. Finally they get the number right and ask for a full bank statement print-out which they manage to drop on the ground, watching helplessly as the younger people scrabble about impatiently to pick up the sheets. With a little practice, an old codger can hold up a queue for five minutes, adding a little excitement to an otherwise dull day. Next week: dropping your coins at the car-park exit.

AS some airlines are forced to banish laptops and other smart devices to the baggage hold for security reasons, some parents are complaining that, without computer games, their kids will become fractious and unmanageable. The solution is blindingly obvious. Stick the kids in the baggage hold, too.

AH, for the simpler days of yore when we flew with nothing more than a well-thumbed newspaper and the latest Harold Robbins paperback to entertain us. What were those clever strategies we had to pass the airborne hours? Ah, yes, I remember. We smoked a lot and got drunk.

WHEN 2017 ends, let us hope this will be included in the year's epitaphs to famous folk who died during the year. “The man I knew was a great guy,” declared Tony Blair's former spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, paying tribute to Martin McGuinness. Oh, sweet.

WE have had our old VHS video cassettes from 30 years ago transferred to DVD. The greatest surprise is not seeing our daughter, now the urban professional, as a one-year-old, nibbling the bread she was supposed to be feeding to the ducks. It is seeing my long-dead parents chatting and laughing and doing a crossword. The generation before them was captured for posterity in nothing more than a few box-Brownie black-and-white snaps. My late videoed parents walk, talk and sing in full colour. And what of us? By the time my generation pops its clogs, we may be recorded in holograms, wandering around our grandchildren's houses in lifelike 3D, offering the vintage wisdom of the 21st century for ages to come. I bet they switch us off.

I REFERRED recently to a litle rhyme commissioned by the Forestry Commission, advocating the “stick and flick” method of disposing of dog poo. A reader asks whether the poem was written by Andrew Motion.