Melanie McDonagh

If there’s one thing to bring out your inner Herod, it’s the twee tendency in younger children’s books. It’s at its worst in the depiction of pirates. Ten Little Pirates shows them cute; The Pirates Next Door as rambunctious; Never Mess with a Pirate Princess as egalitarian; Pirates Love Underpants as… oh stop it. It is the latest aspect of our long-standing obsession with pirates, though it’s never been so commodified or so anodyne. Well, there’s going to be a bracing corrective when the National Maritime Museum launches its Pirates exhibition next year. It’s not aimed at rehabilitation.

Oh. My. Lord. I’ve been looking at Dawn Butler’s spoken verse as presented by her on X and it's difficult to know what to say. It is, it seems, Dawn’s contribution to Black History Month.  The lyrics are at the bottom of the page, though for the full effect you really need to hear her delivery, with the accompanying shots, made up mostly of fetching images of Dawn, but with some material illustrative of her point, if I've discerned it correctly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHVs4XyKx1E&feature=youtu.be What she seems to be doing is addressing a racist troll, though it might be helpful if she made that clearer at the outset, because at present her unseen interlocutor would seem to be any random white person.

There are two untraditional ways to take your leave of this world in Britain. The bleaker is the ‘direct cremation’ method whereby, with no prayers and no mourners, a funeral director will take your remains from mortuary to crematorium to be burnt without troubling your friends and relations. The other is the ‘celebration’. According to Co-op Funeralcare in its new report, called ‘Go Your Own Way’, no fewer than 68 per cent of people it polled regard funerals as a celebration of life, up from 58 per cent five years ago. Out go prayers, black funeral dress and solemnity; in come Doctor Who themes, glittery coffins and guests dressed in football shirts. Or as the report puts it: ‘Personalisation is key.’ The venues are quirky too.

According to canon 1220 of the Catholic church's code of canon law, 'all those responsible are to take care that in churches such cleanliness and beauty are preserved as befit a house of God and that whatever is inappropriate to the holiness of the place is excluded'. So, if Canterbury cathedral were still Catholic, as it was for 900 years before the discordant event of the Reformation, it is fair to say that the ghost of Thomas Becket would not have been disturbed by the rave in the nave which took place last night and is repeated tonight.

So, another place where men have to mind their language: on mountains. In an article in Scottish Mountaineer magazine by one Dr Richard Tiplady, he advises male walkers never to call women ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’. They should not assume that women can’t read a map. ‘If they ask for advice about kit or their route, be polite without being condescending – but don’t offer advice if you’re not asked for it’.  If we carry on at this rate, the human race is going to die out A brief chat about hills, the weather and the man’s intended route is fine, but ‘don’t ask what route they are taking’. If a male walker catches up with a lone woman walker, the rule is a brief ‘hello’, and then onwards.

On the bright side, Nuala McGovern isn’t Emma Barnett, she of the combative approach to broadcasting. The new presenter of Woman’s Hour is a bright, cheerful experienced broadcaster. She’s Irish, spent time in Italy and America, and has lived and worked in the UK for many years. She covered for Emma B when she was on maternity leave and did well. Mind you, I’ve been going out of my way to avoid Woman’s Hour for years now, with some success. The whole notion of a daily broadcast specially for the ladies seems downright odd, but since it’s now firmly embedded in the schedule, it’s not much use complaining.

There’s one way of getting the look of the Chelsea Flower show winner, Ula Maria’s forest bathing garden, and that’s not to mow your lawn but let the flowers and long grass spring up. 'This is not,' I would say austerely to the neighbours if they hang over the wall to suggest a man who could cut the grass, 'an unkempt and neglected space; it is immersive, relaxing and calming'. Actually, that would be pushing it given that most people’s grassy area lacks flint, a blue shed and trees, but you get the gist. And one of the important aspects of this garden, according to Liz Nicholson, the chair of the judges, is that it created 'possibly the biggest insect habitat I’ve ever seen' – in Chelsea, presumably.

Curious, isn’t it, how sentiment changes on a critical issue all of a sudden? Not so long ago, the prospect of turning a blind eye to someone who carried out an abortion in the last trimester of pregnancy – that is, on a foetus of six to nine months’ gestation – would have seemed unthinkable. Is this trend towards liberalising abortion really a sign of progress?  At present, the only circumstances in which you can abort a foetus after 24 weeks is if the mother's life is at risk or the child would be born with a ‘severe’ disability (which has included cleft palate and hare lips, remediable conditions) – which is itself pretty hard to square with the spirit of equalities legislation, as Liam Fox points out.

St Patrick’s Day is coming up and you know what that means… a Shamrock Shake at Starbucks, featuring those well-known Irish ingredients vanilla, mint and green tea. And then there’s the Paddy’s Day merch: shamrocks again. If the Princess of Wales as Colonel of the Irish guards turns up to celebrate the day, she’ll be sporting a sprig of it the size of a small broccoli. What could be better as a symbol of all things Irish than this botanical metaphor for the Trinity? Because, as we all know, it was St Patrick who, to describe the triune God to the native Irish, picked a shamrock to demonstrate the Three Persons in one God.