It`s good to be back home after our week in Cornwall. After about 800 miles driving, after six days of unbroken, warm sunshine (it rained all the way home on Saturday) and after being cut off from the rest of the world. We stayed in the `hamlet` of Porthallow just up the hill from Talland Bay and there was no shop, no pub, just a beachside cafe and so no newspapers to keep us up to date with events back in the so called `real world.`

And what do I find when I get back? Well, at least a couple of `curiosities.` The first was that the good ol` U of K came last in the abominable Eurovision Song Contest. It was in 1997, I think, that we last won the thing, when Katrina and the Waves wowed us with `Love Shine a Light` or something, since when there has been a regular pattern of heroic failure. Now, whilst they are dancing in the streets of Germany for having won this year, we on the other hand, who refuse to take it seriously, are finding at least some kudos in being bottom of the Euroclass and, of course, relieved once more at not having to fork out the mega money needed to `host` the event which always falls to the winners to do. So, all in all a good result.

The other curiosity was the elevation of John Prescott to the peerage. I thought he had always said that he would have nothing to do with the Upper House, however it seems his good lady wife has harboured other thoughts. Now, I don`t want to be unkind to John Prescott but here we have an ex-cruise ship steward who somehow rose to the status of Deputy Prime Minister whilst all the time displaying a vibrant talent for womanising, croquet playing, punching and brawling with voters and generally bruising his way through life. But his most endearing quality has always been his effortless ability to systematically mangle the English language, to the extent that most of the time we never really understood what he was talking about. Neither, I suspect, did he.

And so how come Lord Prescott of Kingston upon Hull can take the ermine and presume to add to the quality of debate in our second chamber? The answer must be that the `honour` and the title has really gone to the fragrant Lady Pauline who has shown remarkable courage, persistence, loyalty and long suffering above and beyond the call of duty and who has now reaped the reward for standing by her man. Still, I`m looking forward to Lord Prescott`s maiden speech (I use the word advisedly) in the Lords, in the confident belief that he will yet again leave us baffled, whilst Lady Pauline smiles knowingly from the gallery.

The so called `real world` just gets curiouser and curiouser.