Rhodes on proud Territorials, trauma in the changing rooms and nine new symptoms of Covid

I don't write much about transgender issues, mainly because it's a subject that hardly ever crops up in my correspondence. But I'll venture two cheers for this week's guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) designed to protect people from fear, embarrassment or distress.

It is a complex, divisive and polarised issue fought between a minority who maintain that anyone who chooses to style themselves female is by definition a woman, and the majority who question the right of massively-muscled sportspeople who were formerly male being allowed to compete in female sports. As for the changing-rooms dilemma, these incidents may be debated at great length but they tend to be over in a matter of seconds.

The trans woman with male genitalia in the ladies' changing rooms may be someone who was born male and is making the profound and long-considered transition to female by means of hormones and even surgery - a person who deserves nothing but consideration and sympathy. But on the other hand she may simply be a bloke, a fetishist who gets his sexual thrills from dressing in women's clothes and mixing with naked women. In which case she (or, let's face it, he) deserves to be shown the door. The problem, amid the shock, disorientation and confusion of such moments, is that nobody knows what is going on.

The EHRC advice, supporting both single-sex and gender-neutral spaces, may not be the whole answer to such distressing encounters. But it injects a little calm, sympathy, discipline and mutual respect into the argument until something better comes along.

Ten years ago, despite much opposition, the Ministry of Defence renamed the Territorial Army as the Army Reserve. Today in Ukraine, reservists and volunteers are fighting bravely and effectively in units they are proud to call Territorial Defence Battalions. If the T-word is good enough for the heroes of Ukraine, it's surely good enough for our part-time warriors.

Nine new symptoms have been added to the official list of things to watch out for if you believe you have caught Covid-19. They are; shortness of breath, feeling tired, aching body, headache, sore throat, blocked or runny nose, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, feeling sick or being sick. Seriously, is there anyone in Britain not suffering from one or more of these conditions most of the time?