Invincible in the snow? Peter Rhodes on bogging-down, distorting Dickens and a sparkling triumph for gin

AFTER last week's item on the benefits of winter tyres, a reader says his new 4x4 seems "invincible." Oh, beware. In my misspent youth with the Territorial Army, we spent a lot of time digging "invincible" 4x4s out of mud, slush and snow. My troop's personal best was three Land Rovers in a queue, stuck up to their wheel arches. We had to bang on the door of the Royal Armoured Corps and borrow a tracked vehicle to pull them out. Believe me, when the snowman brings the snow what you really need is a Scorpion tank.

DELIGHTED to see gin has overtaken rum, whisky and vodka to become the nation's favourite spirit. In his glorious Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams says about 85 per cent of all known worlds in the Galaxy have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, "or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme." G&T is a pan-galactic success, so subtle, so complex, so effervescently effective in calming the universe and making all life-forms nicer. The trouble is that an infinite universe doesn't know when to stop.

MY brilliant theological summary, of God making Man capable of sin and then punishing him for sinning, as "a bit daft" is derided by one reader as "the most off-target caricature of the truth since someone first claimed that the moon was made of cheese." The truth? You possess the truth? Or is it maybe just an opinion?

CALL me an old fogey and boil me with the Christmas pudding but I detest the trend of introducing 21st century issues into old and much-loved works. Ebenezer Scrooge, as portrayed in the RSC adaptation of A Christmas Carol at Stratford, is wickeder than Charles Dickens intended. In addition to his legendary meanness, this Scrooge (Phil Davis) is given a script involving racism. He snarls about "blackamoors, Chinamen and Poles." No such lines, or anything like them, appear in the book. In fact, trawling through A Christmas Carol for the umpteenth time, I find there is only one named ethnic-minority character. In a dream sequence, Scrooge encounters one of his favourite figures from his childhood reading who is both an Arab and a Muslim. "Why it's Ali Baba," exclaims Scrooge with warmth and affection. "It's dear old honest Ali Baba!" Hardly what you'd expect from a racist.

SCROOGE was a grasping, covetous sinner but he hounded his debtors regardless of race or creed. He may have been a miserable old git but he was an equal-opportunities miserable old git. Scrooge has served us well every Christmas since 1843 and I see no good reason to muck around with his character now, just to make a modern point. Harrumph and double humbugs all round.

INCIDENTALLY, kids, I'm pretty sure Ebenezer Scrooge would have voted for Brexit. Hiss the villain.