Peter Rhodes on dabbling with the 21st century, evacuating royals and the BBC in mourning

I WAS doing my public-speaking thing at the weekend which meant a rare dabble into the 21st century. I successfully switched on a mobile phone, found my way to Wolverhampton, negotiated a diversion through the one-way system, bought a Costa coffee, decrypted the parking instructions in the multi-storey, did the speech, got a round of applause and drove safely home. Despite Brexit.

TALKING of which, was everyone at the BBC wearing black ties for the announcement that Nissan had decided not to build its latest SUV model at Sunderland? The news was delivered in the funereal tones we generally associate with members of the Royal Family passing away.

MOURNER-in-chief was Radio 4's Mark Mardell who seemed on the verge of tears. When Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out that Nissan had much bigger problems than Brexit, Mardell was left speechless. How dare anybody challenge Auntie Beeb's holy writ that good news is "despite Brexit" and bad news is "due to Brexit"?

STILL on the B-word (whatever did we talk about before it?), my eye was caught by a Sunday Times headline: "Brexit plan to evacuate the Queen." Many years ago an old sub-editor attacked my prose with his blue pen and informed me, in no uncertain terms, that buildings are evacuated, not people. And certainly not Her Majesty. But that was then and this is now. While some dictionaries cling to the old definition, most now agree that people can indeed be evacuated, even if it leaves us old hacks with alarming mental images of enemas and suchlike.

THE recent snow produced a rare crop of "snow rollers" near Marlborough, caused when the wind blows snow into the shape of a hollow wheel which then careers across fields, leaving a long and puzzling furrow. And very impressive, too.

HOWEVER, last week's event is still dwarfed by the inexplicable "Devil's footprints" of 1855 when thousands of hoof-like marks appeared overnight in the snow, on fields and roofs, for more than 40 miles across Devon. To this day the event remains unsolved but I do like the claim, by the Rev. G. M. Musgrave, that it was caused by a couple of kangaroos which escaped from a private zoo. The man of God later admitted he made up the story to stop his parishioners claiming the hoof prints were left by a visit from the Devil.

ACCORDING to a survey by the Halifax, Orkney is the best place to live in Britain. So it comes as a surprise to learn how few Orcadians make up the population and how many outsiders have settled in the cluster of islands, bringing new life. It didn't all happen by chance. An online study of Orkney's population tells how one island developed its own "self-originated immigration policy." This policy "quietly kept out all but young families and fertile women until very recently. This was achieved by simply not selling properties to anybody who was not acceptable." Fascinating. And if an English town tried to do the same . . ?