Peter Rhodes on a tiny boat, a massive bomber and how quickly cafe society turns to ashes

Spring sunshine and blue, blue sky. We strolled into town where the pavement cafes were full of happy folk. Give us the weather and we Brits can do cafe society as well as anyone else. And then you look again at this carefree scene and remember this is how it was, only four weeks ago, in Kyiv, Mariupol, Bucha, Irpin and all the other Ukrainian towns and cities laid waste by Putin's savages.

I recalled another crisp, bright cafe scene about a dozen years ago when I was in Tallinn, capital of Estonia. It is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Some fear it is on Putin's hit list as he tries to rebuild a new Soviet Union, paved with rubble and peppered with mass graves. Four weeks. That's all it takes.

We can be thankful, at least at the time of writing, that Russia has not yet shot down an airliner, as its henchmen in southern Ukraine did in 2014. After the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, I wrote about the lawlessness of the region where thugs with Kalashnikovs strutted and menaced, and asked: “What madness possesses the European Union to force its borders ever closer to such benighted places?” We never did get an answer to that one.

I would not be surprised if, as the United States dusts off its hardware, the reliable old B-52 bombers were being readied. Astonishingly, this year marks the 70th anniversary of the prototype B-52. Moral: If it ain't broke, just let it carry on breaking other things.

We may disapprove of Boris Johnson haggling over oil with Saudi Arabia just a few days after the bloody-handed Saudis executed 81 men as criminals and terrorists. But in April last year a poll found that 51 per cent of Brits would support reinstating the death penalty for terrorism.

The rest presumably take the view that no noose is good news.