Peter Rhodes: It's a boy thing

A FRUIT cake believed to have been from the 1912 Scott expedition has been discovered frozen in the Antarctic and is described as "almost edible." A strange term. Surely, it is either edible or inedible. Maybe someone is "almost brave" enough to take a bite.

AS regular readers will be aware, my BT broadband service works slowly but dependably, unless we have some bizarre and utterly unforeseen weather conditions such as a drop of rain or a bit of wind. Latest outage was for two days. When it was fixed BT left a message to say I should wait a few days for "your broadband speed to get back to normal." Oh, I do hope not.

WE are just back from a few blissful days in Whitwell, a village on the north shore of Rutland Water. The place was recommended by friends who said it served the best pub grub ever. And it does. Our room contained the strangest bit of furniture I've ever seen. It was an old chest of drawers embedded in the wall, as though the builders had been too lazy to move it and had built the wall around it. Odd but useful, with hidden depths.

MY computer spell-check has inexplickerbly packed up. The above item almost included that most popular of food, "bup brug."

THE church at Whitwell has a rare ecclesiastical feature, a bread oven and chimney. In ye olden days the church supplied fresh bread to the village. I can't recall another church with such a facility which is strange because there is an age-old link between bread and religion. That oven must have inspired all sorts of sermons.

WATCHING a gang of 10-year-old lads playing by Rutland Water, I was reminded of one of the biggest puzzles of humankind. How is it that any boy ever survives into adulthood? From cradle to college they seem hell-bent on self destruction. This lot were at first kicking a ball by the shore. Then one decided it would be ace to boot the ball into the lake. So another stripped off his shirt and walked, trembling, into the freezing, heart-stopping water. Twenty yards out he grabbed the ball and began swimming back. At which point his mates decided it would be hilarious to chuck pebbles at him. Somehow, the kid avoided drowning, cardiac arrest and death by stoning. It was the perfect illustration of the absolute inability of young males to foresee the consequences of their actions. I recognise this demi-madness because, like half the population, I have been there. You plunge into a reservoir, cycle off a cliff, chuck a stone at a train or lob a brick over a garden wall and are utterly amazed when anybody gets hurt. It's a boy thing.

A SUDDEN rise in hare coursing in eastern England has been blamed on an early harvest leaving the fields clear. Well, that may be part of the explanation. But the real reason for killing hares with greyhounds is that some people who like to think of themselves as countryfolk are actually sadistic morons.