Peter Rhodes on surprise destinations, high-speed rescues and the unkind alternatives to smacking

WALES may soon outlaw the smacking of children. This would be fine if we knew that the alternatives to smacking were any kinder. But I bet we've all seen frazzled parents, who would never dream of smacking, inflicting the pinch, the shaking, the hair-twist, the shouting-in-the-face, the locking of a child in its room or the withholding of toys. Confiscating a distraught child's favourite Tigger as a punishment can be far more cruel than a smack.

RESCUE duty again. This is the couple of days per year at the sailing club when I get to look dead butch, dressed up in sailing suit and lifejacket with hand-held radio, snap harnesses, boaty boots and well-hard sunglasses while roaring around the foam-flecked waves in high-speed inflatables, pummelled and thumped by waves, like marbles in a blender. Yeah, we are the rescue team, heroes all. In reality we are a bunch of oldish blokes, keeping an eye on dinghy-crazy youngsters who have far too much energy and no real idea of their own mortality. To you and me, this water stuff is very wet, deep, cold and best avoided. To the heroic, stick-thin racers in wetsuits, capsize and recovery is all part of the fun. Enjoy it, kids. The day will come when you no longer spring from your boat at the end of a day's racing but crawl tenderly on to the pontoon like the old gits of the rescue team, with aches in places you didn't even know you had places.

THE most gasp-inducing part of dinghy racing comes when the drab grey boats reach the buoy and, in quick succession, unleash their spinnakers. A dozen vast colourful sails break forth, billowing in the wind. It is like watching the birth of beautiful giant butterflies.

YOU may smile at this week's news of a British Airways aircraft bound for Dusseldorf from London City Airport which landed by mistake at Edinburgh. But these things happen. Some years ago on a flight from Sri Lanka to Gatwick, we hit bad turbulence over the Himalayas and an engine cover seemed to be rattling. The captain explained we would be making an unscheduled landing at . . . and he said a name that sounded like "Bozzle." The cabin crew and passengers were equally puzzled. Had he said Brussels or Basel? The Brussels / Basel debate continued between passengers through the long and bumpy descent until the plane suddenly popped out of low cloud and we hit the runway. "Ladies and gentlemen," the captain announced. "We have landed at Zurich." He seemed as surprised as the rest of us.

A RATHER more eventful flight happened this week in 1992 when the cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to earth after a record 311 days on the Mir space station and, presumably, asked the usual question: "Much happened?" While he had been in space, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the new Russia created. You take off under communism. You touch down under capitalism. That's politics, comrade.