Peter Rhodes: Sail on, Sandor

JOHANNA Konta plays a great game of tennis. But I'm just as impressed with her beautiful spoken English. In an age of lazy, grunting, consonant-dropping Estuary English where the phrase “Do you know what I mean?” is usually truncated to “jinarmin?” Konta is a beacon of clarity. She was born in Australia to Hungarian parents yet she speaks the Queen's English better than wot most English folk do, jinarmin?

AS the seventh season of Game of Thrones kicks off on Sky, I am reminded of a sunny day in Scotland a few months ago. I was waiting for a ferry to a remote island when I was joined at the slipway by the most handsome man I have ever beheld. He was tall, dark and designer-stubbled and he spoke with a gentle Scottish accent as he offered me a lift across. The crossing took about 20 minutes and as his battered old boat pop-popped along, we got chatting. He said, in a smiling, self-mocking way, that he was an actor “from time to time.” Anyway, long story short, he turned out to be Rory McCann, better known to Thrones fans as the tormented and hate-driven Sandor “The Hound” Clegane. On the screen, a mass killer with his axe dripping with entrails. In real lifE, a nice bloke.

SOME years back, an author published an appeal for help with a book he was writing on the evacuation of millions of children as war broke out in the autumn of 1939. But he didn't want just any old memories. He wanted specifically to hear from children who had been physically and sexually abused as evacuees. Which rather excluded people like my father who was evacuated, with his younger brother, from a Godforsaken slum in inner-city Bradford to a picture-postcard village in the Yorkshire Dales. For the next few years this pair of no-hope Tykes were in the care of an elderly spinster called Aunt Maude. It was a genteel, life-transforming experience which clearly did not fit the author's agenda of painting evacuation as a sort of hell on earth. I was reminded of him a few days ago when the Victoria Derbyshire show (BBC1) began with this appeal: “Do get in touch if one of your relatives in a care home has received poor care.” Hang on. What about all the British folk who have received excellent care and whose families cannot speak too highly of the carers? These are complex issues and if you only go looking for half the story, you'll only ever tell half the truth.

SO farewell, at least for the time being, to Doctor Who and those weekly encounters with time-bending travel. Strange to report, but real life has its share of wormholes and time-slips. Take the curious fact that we are preparing for Mrs Rhodes's 37th birthday at the weekend, even though I could swear we met 45 years ago.

A READER admits she's alarmed at my recent item on “toilet plumes” which, according to new research, can spread microscopic faecal particles up to 15 feet, unless you close the lid before flushing. Her problem is that her backyard WC has no lid, and what can I advise? A 16-foot pole and some running shoes.