Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on ailments, scents and the benefits of talking to Brussels

I suspected we were not alone in finding our holiday cottage sweet-sickly reeking with diffusers, as described last week.

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A perfect separation? Photo: Kirsty O'Connor/PA Wire

A reader recalls staying in an over-perfumed Cornish cottage with “mains-powered scent things” in every room. You head to the coast for fresh, bracing sea air; you end up enveloped in the cloying pong of fake vanilla, not so much Fowey as Phewey.

I am sure it's purely by chance that my doctor increased my blood-pressure medication on the day the Labour government was elected. Reading the drug-information leaflet, which I suspect is drafted by American lawyers, I learn that side-effects to watch out for include “altered numbers and types of blood cells.” Simple question: How does the ordinary patient spot a blood-cell malady?