Peter Rhodes on prostate cancer, plastic in the garden and the difference between humor and humour

I KNEW this had been a long, miserable winter but it was only after putting my old boat on the lake this week that I realised how long. It was the first time I had sailed since October 12. We Brits spend half the year waiting for the other half and hoping it will be better.

I WROTE about Donald Trump's joke on "self-deprecating humour." A reader says surely this should be "humor." Not at all. Trump, being an American, said "humor" but I, being British, heard "humour." On my honor.

I AM at the age where blokes worry about prostate cancer. As well they might. Years of watching TV medical dramas has convinced most of us that the Big C follows a pattern. You get the symptoms, go for tests which confirm the GP's hunch, the clever young surgeon cuts out the offending tumour and you live happily ever after (unless the TV ratings are bad, in which case they may bump you off). As a survey this week reveals, prostate cancer is very different.

WITH prostate cancer you may or may not develop symptoms. The only available test for detecting signs of prostate cancer is about as much use as tossing a coin. A follow-up biopsy may leave you impotent, incontinent or both. The cancer may kill you quickly or do nothing, and you die of old age. A serious prostate cancer can look benign and a benign cancer can appear serious. And sometimes surgery can release cancerous cells into the rest of your body. We need a better diagnostic process. So is there no hope? Actually, there is. This latest study followed 400,000 middle-aged men for a decade. And while routine PSA screening for prostate cancer appeared to save no lives, only three men in every 1,000 died of prostate cancer during the 10 years. Those are not bad odds. While there's no room for complacency about prostate cancer, the one thing this survey proves conclusively is that there's a lot of other stuff you can die of.

STILL on things below the belt, the late Sir Roger Bannister was a celebrated neurologist. Did you notice how many gabbling TV and radio newsreaders carelessly dropped the N, making it sound like urologist? This is turning into a very damp column.

I SUSPECT Monty Don, the TV gardener, has been seriously misquoted. He wants us to use fewer plastic products in our gardens. This has been translated as a call to "get rid of" plastic tubs, pots, dibbers and so on. But it's getting rid of plastic that has caused the environmental nightmare in the first place. Don't bin it. Keep the plastic you've got but don't buy any more.

INCIDENTALLY, I am down to my last 18 plastic straws from a box, purchased some years ago, which contained 225 and carries the message from Sainsbury's "We care about our quality and what you think." I wonder what they think I should do with my last 18 straws.