Peter Rhodes on electrical harmony, spreading Covid and how to dig out the bad apples in the police

It's the little things that restore your faith in human nature. Someone placed a beautiful, and very expensive, bouquet on a memorial bench in our local park. I assumed it would be swiped by the ungodly within hours. A week later it's still there.

The European Union is congratulating itself over its plans to introduce a single-pattern charger for mobile phones, tablets and other devices. Well done, Brussels. Now, how about a common electrical plug and socket system across the entire continent, which would make life a lot easier? They've had half a century to grasp this nettle, and failed.

How many bad apples are quietly festering away in our police forces? Before embarking on the mass re-assessment of every single officer in the hunt for racism, misogyny and violence, the authorities might start by inviting anonymous tip-offs from front-line cops who have a pretty good idea about their colleagues. I recall a night out many years ago with a couple of traffic cops for a feature on the pre-Xmas breathalyser patrol. Half-way through the shift they pulled into a police station canteen car park where a white van used by an urban patrol unit was parked. The highway cops took one look and had second thoughts. “No way are we eating with those animals,” said our driver, driving on. I wonder what he knew.

Pathetic, isn't it, to hear people blathering about the prospect of being without a turkey at Christmas? Here is a simple solution: 1) buy a turkey. 2) put it in your freezer. 3) relax. And if you think you don't have enough room in the freezer, try looking right at the back where you may find all those bacon rashers and tiny sausages you bought last year when the great pigs-in-blankets panic was doing the rounds.

By the end of this week we should know whether the London Marathon and the Conservative Conference were anything other than regular landmarks in Britain's calendar. Because, to a layman like me, they both looked like Covid super-spreader events. The tally of positive cases is running at a shocking 40,000 a day. Pray it doesn't shoot up.

I smiled at this warning notice on a white van used by an upmarket events caterer: “No caviar is left in this van overnight.”