Peter Rhodes: We're all guilty of something

OUR changing language. A reader spotted this in a trade catalogue: "Beds and bedroom furniture is the first of many categories the business will be on-boarding over the coming months".

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IN one of the weekend magazines, Monty Don, heartthrob gardener for the matrons of Middle England, declares that 60 is no longer old. So what's new? By chance, on the very same day, BBC2 screened the 1957 musical Silk Stockings in which Cyd Charisse, then aged 35, falls helplessly in love with Fred Astaire - a spry young 68.

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THINK it through, chuck. On Any Questions (Radio 4) Alice Nutter, the Lancashire writer and musician, declared that David Cameron should pay reparations to Jamaica because his family had once owned slaves, while "my family were weavers and labourers for 200 years . . we didn't have slaves." And what do you think the weavers were weaving, Alice? Cotton, perhaps? And who picked the cotton to keep Lancashire's mills in business? If we turn the clock back far enough we're all guilty of something.

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IN fact, it's hard to pin much slavery-guilt on Cameron. The slave-owner in question was his great-great-several-times grandfather's cousin. Hence this grovelling apology in the Guardian for a misleading headline: "As the text of the article explains, Sir James Duff was the son of one of Cameron's great-grand uncles - and therefore could not accurately be described as his ancestor, which is defined as someone from whom one is directly descended."

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I SPENT a night on my boat, moored on Rutland Water, snug in an arctic sleeping bag with the hatch open, watching the stars in a cold, clear autumn sky. At least you think they are stars, until they start moving and you realise they are shooting stars, satellites, planets, high-flying aircraft, interstellar invasion fleets from the Zzarnfghian galaxy (dammit, I'm not supposed to mention those) and other assorted stuff. The sky at night is disturbingly busy.

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AND so is the wildlife. The joy of camping out in October is not being woken by the dawn chorus at 4am. The downside is damn great things the size of pigs landing on your boat in the pitch dark, cackling and then dropping like bricks into the water. What the hell was that all about?

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IMAGINE this. You are a hard-working Tory MP who for years has worked his way up the greasy pole via countless nerve-shredding election nights and endless lobbying in high places. You were rather hoping for a nice little job in the Government. And then you pick up the papers yesterday to read that your great pal George Osborne has handed the sweetest job of all, head of the National Infrastructure Commission with a glittering £5,000 million annual budget, to the unelected, unTory, ex-Blair buddy and Labour Party member, Lord bloody Adonis. I bet there are lots of knives being sharpened in Manchester today.

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I AM inundated by your suggestions for British place names that would benefit from an exclamation mark, like the Devon village Westward Ho! New contenders include Splott! Sodom! Twatt! Knockin! and, of course, the Staffordshire village of Flash! Bet you can't see that without thinking "Gordon."

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MOVING on, a few readers believe there is a case for adding question marks to some places. Wyre Piddle? is an early contender, inviting the response: "Why not?" One reader suggests a question mark after a town in Shropshire, on the grounds that it is neither new nor a port. Newport?

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THEN there are Watten? Witcham? Wye? and Hooe? Enough, already.