Tea, George?

GREAT coincidences of our time. Suggested penalty fee for UK to leave EU - £50 billion. Cost of unwanted, unaffordable and unnecessary HS2 railway - £50 billion.

THIS is going to go on for ever, isn't it? Didn't you imagine that once Theresa May delivered her Article 50 letter, the negotiators would go into closed session and get on with the divorce arrangements and the rest of us could go back to bickering about pot holes and Bake Off and suchlike? Instead, I fear that every EU cough and splutter will be dragged into the media and endlessly dissected by earnest pundits. We don't want it. We don't need it. Memo to Downing Street: Just sort things out the best you can and report back in 2019.

INCIDENTALLY the term “divorce” suggests there was once a happy marriage between Britain and Brussels. My eye was caught by a piece in the Times which said the relationship was more like a fractious house-share with us accusing the other tenants of stealing food from the fridge and letting strangers in to sleep on the sofa.

IN the meantime, in the words of Noel Coward, don't let's be beastly to the Germans. Since the Brexit letter was delivered there has been an unpleasant ripple of anti-German sentiment. Some think Brexit would hand Europe over to the mercies of Berlin while others take the opposite view that Britain, by leaving, would frustrate Germany's plans for domination. The truth is that the Germans are easily the best Europeans of all. Theirs is the only nation that joined the Common Market not for what it could get out of Europe but for what it could put in. As Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne) memorably put it in Yes, Minister (BBC) more than 35 years ago, Germany entered the union after the Second World War “to cleanse themselves of genocide and apply for readmission to the human race.”

IF Germany today dominates the EU it is probably because it works harder, invests more in its industries and is better governed than the rest. My only regret is that in leaving the EU we couldn't take Germany with us.

MARY Berry says her forthcoming book of household tips will include “a no-fuss way to clean the loo.” Which raises an obvious question: what is the fussy way to clean the loo?

GEORGE Clooney is reportedly paid 40 million dollars to advertise the Nespresso coffee maker. So you might imagine he would promote coffee at every opportunity. Not so. In a recent interview about his pregnant wife Amal, Clooney said: “There is nothing I can do to help but make tea and stuff.” I bet the email is already winging its way from Nespresso: “Tea, George? Tea?”

MANY thanks for your tips on how to encourage cats to use cat flaps. The most inventive was the reader who confronted a reluctant moggie with his daughter's Spit-the-Dog glove puppet. He reports that the cat “launched himself a couple of feet into the air, hit the ground running, out of our lounge, into the kitchen, ricochetting off the fridge and straight out through the cat flap.” Sorted.