Peter Rhodes on face-blindness, Orkney dissent and the word that says it's all over
Paranoias of our time. Do you find yourself tentatively switching on the radio to catch up on the Test Match score, terrified of hearing the one short, sharp, fatal and decisive little word that tells us it's all over? Plucky.
Councillors in Orkney, fed up over being allegedly ignored and short-changed by the governments in London and Edinburgh, are looking at different governance arrangements, including their historic “Nordic connections.” If they opt to quit the UK and be governed from friendly, hard-working and wealthy little Norway, can we English please go with them?
The well-heeled organisers of the upmarket Henley Royal Regatta have complained about the sewage-ridden state of the Thames. Sometimes, where there's brass there's muck.
Joanna Lumley, the actress, campaigner and all-round national treasure, admits she is face-blind. Stuck with the condition prosopagnosia, she is unable to remember faces for even a few minutes. Join the club. I am hopeless at remembering features. My personal record for forgetting someone happened years ago when I moved into a bed-sit. On the first morning I greeted another tenant and five minutes later, to his surprise, greeted him again. What made me assume it was a different person? On the second meeting he was wearing bicycle clips. This may baffle you but it will make perfect sense to Miss Lumley.
If you suffer, even mildly, from prosopagnosia, the movies can be a minefield. I once got hopelessly confused watching the gangster film The Departed. It makes much more sense when you discover that Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon are not one and the same person.
Announcing she is to stand down after ten years as an MP in the Commons, the SNP's deputy leader Mhairi Black, still only 28, denounces Westminster for its “toxic environment.” Whereas the SNP is a haven of loyalty, friendship, sweetness and joy.
After my latest problem with BT, a reader says the most irritating thing is when you can't get online and you're in the phone queue to BT and keep getting phone messages suggesting it would be quicker if you went online. I thought it was just me.
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