The Great Lithium Conspiracy

DRIVERLESS Lorries to Hit British Roads (headline this week). Precisely. And what else will they hit?

NO-ONE has satisfactorily explained how, if you encounter a convoy of three "platooned" lorries as you join the motorway, you are supposed to find a gap and enter the carriageway. Under the present arrangements, you can generally nudge into a line of lorries, especially if you have a company car.

IF you're following Outlander, the time-travel, tartan and totty saga on More 4, you will have just encountered that great movie cliche, namely Ye Olde Tossing of Purses. The little leather sack stuffed with gold coins and tied with a drawstring has been a standard prop in dramas from ancient Rome via the Wild West to Victorian England. The golden rule is that no purse can simply be handed from one person to another. The holder tosses it. The recipient catches it. The holder never misses his target. The recipient never fumbles or drops it.

I WAS tempted by one of the ice-cream sweets on offer at a restaurant because it was "garnished with a malted ball." A malted ball? What exotic, sophisticated and perfectly crafted amuse-bouche might this be? Turned out to be a Malteser.

SOME scientists believe dementia could be avoided by adding lithium to our tap water. So let me be the first to alert you to the Great Lithium Conspiracy. It is, of course, a wicked plan concocted by the Illuminati, the shadowy figures who really control this planet, to introduce a sinister chemical into our water to take us over by controlling our minds and polluting our precious bodily fluids. It is part of their Master Plan which also involved kidnapping Elvis, assassinating John Lennon, faking the moon landings and murdering Princess Di (because she knew about the lithium). Do not touch a drop of lithiumised water without first wrapping your head in aluminium foil. Pass it on before they get you, too.

IF you need evidence that our civilisation is in decline, look no further than the bank-holiday queues for cut-price Prosecco at some Lidl branches which descended into ugliness when stocks ran out. "My weekend is ruined," howled one hysterical Twitter user facing the unspeakable horror of having to pay £5.79 for a bottle of bubbly instead of the £3.33 offer. Ruination is not what it used to be.

FRANKLY, nothing surprises me about the Brits any more, especially when alcohol is involved. But the real shocker of the Great Prosecco Disaster was the Daily Telegraph, that steadfast defender of British customs and the Queen's English, which informed us that some booze-queuers reported "jostling and fisty cuffs." That's right, "fisty cuffs" appeared in the Daily Telegraph. Our civilisation implodes. The nation is doomed.

MIND you, the Yanks will probably beat us in the headlong rush to terminal decline. A clinic in Redding, California, reports having to treat some folk who, not having dark glasses to view last week's total eclipse, rubbed suncream on their eyeballs instead. To infinite thickness, and beyond.