Peter Rhodes on hawking, cold homes and making money out of death

I once spent a memorable day at a falconry centre with a spaniel, two ferrets and a pair of Harris's hawks. 

A photo of the event shows me and a hawk both looking intently into a spinney. 

The hawk is sitting on my head which was thankfully protected by a tweed hat. As far as this fearless predator was concerned, the human's head was simply a useful perch.

What's the last thing you'd like to hear as you pass away? Handel's Messiah? Sinatra doing it My Way? 

A full-throated rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone? Or how about the cheerful “Kerchink!” of a cash till as the private company which administers the fatal cocktail collects its fee? Did it occur to any of us when the assisted-dying legislation was prepared that this procedure would be carried out by anyone other than NHS staff?

Now, the care minister Stephen Kinnock says he's “comfortable” with the idea of independent contractors doing the deed. 

This could create a multi-million pound industry whose chief aim, I fear, would be to lobby for the rules on assisted dying to be relaxed ever further. Kinnock may be comfortable with this but I bet most of us are deeply uncomfortable.

How many of us, after a couple of warm days last week, turned down the heating and woke to a perishing cold house as winter returned? 

If it's any consolation, from many years spent interviewing all sorts of people in all sorts of dwellings, I can report that the posher the person, the colder the home.

I once interviewed William Buchan, a son of the great writer John Buchan, in his ancient country cottage. Every door and window was open and a bracing gale whistled through the rooms. His full name and title was William James de L'Aigle Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir, and they don't come much posher, or colder, than that.