Comedian Vic Reeves wants to create his own brand of perfume – called Old Lady’s Handbag. Vic confessed: “I really do like ladies’ perfumes.” As a boy he, understandably, sniffed the bottom of his auntie’s handbag: aroma of Parma Violets and marshmallows, “old ladies’ sweets”. Hmm. Does sound rather nice.

Backward step

Office workers believe managers using jargon show they’ve no idea what they’re doing. A study mentioned “blue-sky thinking”and “touching base”, but at least these were creative and metaphorical in origin. It’s “moving forward” that rips my knitting. Where else are we supposed to move? Backwards? Sideways? Such a lot of nonsense.

Isle be damned

How sad to see Gruinard ablaze from “one end to the other” after a wildfire. We feel for that benighted island, used for testing germ warfare when England was at war with Germany. The blaze was described as “apocalyptic”, a word increasingly on our minds. Let Gruinard rise from the ashes and be free from travails moving forward.

Tenuous much?

Explorer and slavery despiser David Livingstone has been associated with … slavery. How so? He once worked as a cotton-spinner in a mill whose owner had business interests with West India merchants. It’s like being called racist because you bought fags from a shop whose owner had an auntie who visited her sister in apartheid South Africa.

Pack it in

Could jetpacks be here at last? Trials are taking place in yonder Lake District, aimed at helping paramedics rescue injured hill-walkers. Yes, but when will the rest of us get them? It would solve all our traffic problems, though we’d keep banging into each other.