Peter Rhodes on the perils of technology, the return of weddings and a perfect storm coming this weekend

I switched on the radio to hear a headline apparently about people planning for Christmas: “How Santas can enter properties.” Turned out to be house hunters.

As foreign trips are put on hold, some readers recall grim English holidays of yore. One has an abiding memory of being invited on stage by a clown during a show. I once wrote that clowns were simply not funny. I expected a tirade of abuse. In the event I had precisely one angry letter signed by two men, father and son. Both were professional clowns. Now, that was funny.

The ingredients for a perfect storm of coronavirus infections will come together tomorrow. They are: a sunny weekend, people with no brains and a government allowing unrestricted travel for people wanting “exercise.” In effect, you can now drive where you like. And because the brainless have very few ideas between 'em, they will converge on resorts, national parks and all the other places where the locals fervently do not want them. I bet the anti-grockle gangs are ready.

One of the biggest obstacles to the Government's track and trace smartphone project is the simple, scuppering statistic that 60 per cent of pensioners don't have a smartphone. And I guess many of these don't have a home computer either. There was a time when I would have encouraged every over-60 to get connected, back in the good old days when the internet was benign and packed with bargains.

Today it is a byword for crooks and crashes. I referred a few weeks ago to the trauma of being locked out when BT refuses to recognise your perfectly valid email password. BT knows full well about this glitch, given the testimony of many frazzled users locked out for no reason and finding BT “experts” unable to help. And if you give up on BT's online help and take advice from fellow sufferers, this is the sort of tip you get: “The thing to remember when changing password, is to stop all devices from auto-syncing with the server.” Still thinking of going online, Grandma? Think again.

The Government's conditional plan is to allow weddings ceremonies – cancelled since March - to take place in England from June. It is one thing to allow ceremonies, it is quite another to get people to attend at a time when wise folk avoid crowds like the plague for the excellent reason that crowds unleash the plague. “Thank you very much for the invitation to the wedding of Hugo and Hilaria. Unfortunately, that is the day we will be mowing the lawn.”

Positively the final mention of Pendulous Sedge, the variety of grass I said sounded like a Dickensian character and one reader thought was a pop group. Another reader swears that Pendulous Sedge is “a rather nasty disease of the male genitalia.”