A coal-free Britain? Not yet

AFTER my recent item on the wife of a sultan being a sultana, a reader asks whether their first meeting would be a date.

OUR changing language. A reader tells me his local GP surgery has a sign warning about a hitch with the electronic log-in system. It reads: “Please do not use the Jayex machine to arrive your child for Baby Clinic.” This reminds me that my annual blood-pressure appointment is approaching. Some time next month I must arrive myself at the clinic. I must also arrive a urine sample.

AFTER the trauma of her above-the-wrist amputation in Line of Duty (BBC1), didn't DCI Roz Huntley (Thandie Newton) seem remarkably casual about asking her husband for a divorce? Quite off-handed.

ACCORDING to weekend reports, Donald Trump suffers from an irrational fear of staircases and his state visit to Britain later this year is being planned to avoid too many steps. Curiously, this condition is known as bathophobia, which rather makes you wonder what a fear of baths is called.

THE National Grid has announced that, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, Britain has produced all its energy for a 24-hour period without using coal power. Er, not exactly. Even as the Grid was preparing its momentous press release, a few of us lost souls on the urban fringe, way beyond the reach of mains gas and unwilling to switch to propane or oil, were still shovelling anthracite into boilers to warm ourselves and heat our water. I suppose one day there will be no more coal and no coal merchants and we will have to burn the furniture or huddle around the cat. I was sort of hoping our old boiler would eventually be replaced by global warming. Not yet awhile.

TALKING of which, this time last week Chateau Rhodes was sitting right under an ominous minus-five symbol on the Met Office weather chart with a succession of forecasters warning us throughout the day to expect something called a “damaging frost.” We duly covered our tenderest plants to protect their blossom. No frost came. And remember that the experts who can't even correctly predict a frost 12 hours in advance are the same experts asking us to believe them when they warn of a 2degsC rise in global temperatures 50 years from now. Maybe a damaging frost is one that fails to appear, thus damaging their credibility.

THERE is only one possible outcome of this unexpected general election. No matter what May, Corbyn, Farron and all the others may tell you, the unavoidable elephant in the room is that Britain's population is ageing. The old 'uns need looking after and we're all going to have to pay for it. In the 21st century there will be so such thing as the low-tax party.

THAT Labour Party policy on upgrading the Trident nuclear deterrent: 1) Er, no. 2) Er, yes. 3) Er, it will all be fully explained in the manifesto in a few days' time. Maybe.