Peter Rhodes on breaking byelaws, rubbishing our war heroes and celebrations in Nye Bevan's town

MALADIES for our time. After heat exhaustion and sunstroke, watch out for a national epidemic of sunfreeze. A reader tells me he turned up for a meeting one blazing hot day in shorts and light trousers, only to be half-chilled to death by the air-conditioning.

TWO families set up camp a few days ago in our local park (byelaws say "no camping") and brought their rods so the kids could fish in the lake (byelaws say "no fishing"). So what do we make of this? Is it A) a hard-up group of adults harmlessly bending the rules to give their kids a magical weekend? Or is it B) yet another example of feckless, irresponsible scumbags raising a generation of feral brats who think that rules don't apply to them? I suspect your views change from option A) to option B) at about the age of 50.

STILL dithering over having a tattoo? A heatwave reveals millions of them, on show from dawn to bedtime, and the ravages of the years. Those once-pert rosebuds on a shoulder now look like enormous tumours and those elegant lizards on the leg are doing a fine impression of varicose veins. Think on.

ANEURIN "Nye" Bevan, founder of the NHS, is said to have modelled it on the mutual health care scheme in his home town of Tredegar. So naturally the TV cameras converged on the South Wales town where the locals were celebrating the NHS's 70th anniversary, singing the praises of Nye and saying how proud he'd be to see the NHS today. Really? I bet he'd be more surprised to discover that Tredegar has become a contender for the lardarse capital of Britain. Maybe the cameras were being unkind but I have never seen so many grossly overweight people in one small town. Back in 1948 all good socialists believed in providing free health care for those who needed it. No-one imagined that the NHS would spend so much time and money patching up the crippling, long-term conditions that people inflict on themselves.

AND if you doubt the seriousness of the obesity issue, on the very day that Tredegar celebrated its most famous son, a professor at Shrewsbury University calculated that inactivity causes 750 deaths a year in Shropshire alone - the equivalent of two jumbo jets crashing on the county. Dying for another burger?

ONE of my fervent EU-supporting Remainers says of Brexit: "The country has never been in such danger since the fight against Nazism in WW2." Mind you, he rather spoils the effect by referring to British Army veterans as "ex jack-booted squaddies." Wasn't it the Nazis who wore the jack boots?

TERMS for our time. Marmate: a best friend you really can't stand. That one cropped up as a misprint in a reader's letter and I assumed "marmate" was a term in regular use. But I couldn't find a single reference to it in that sense online. You may be witnessing the birth of a new word. He ain't heavy, he's my marmate.