Peter Rhodes on a vanishing heatwave, the Big C and do real kings eat quiche?

Truth is, you're lucky to get 13C and many of us have not been warm since October. If we get a summer scorcher that pops the barometers, you will not hear me complaining.

I have just lost an old friend to cancer. When we have these occasional brushes with the Big C, we suddenly become aware how common it is. Maybe it's an age thing but it seems almost everyone you know either has cancer or knows someone who has.

One explanation is that, as doctors get better at treating it, more people survive longer and so the total number of cancer patients increases. According to Macmillan Cancer Support, about three million Brits are living with cancer in the UK. This is expected to rise to four million by 2030 and 5.3 million by 2040. So what looks like bad news is actually not-so-bad news, although I'm not entirely sure I believe it.

A reader smitten with “half my face frozen”, writes, miffed but still upbeat. Although the symptoms are scary and irritating, he says, what really bugs him is the name of his condition. He finds words beginning with B or P are almost impossible to pronounce. So how does he tell people he's got Bell's Palsy?

He wonders whether the people who gave the name for such a malady are the same ones who thought that difficulty with reading and writing should be called dyslexia, a word that most sufferers can neither read nor write.

The Palace announces that the official Coronation lunch will be quiche made with a filling of spinach and soya beans. Strange choice. Quiche, after all, is the only snack associated with being a wimp, thanks to Bruce Feirstein's 1982 satire, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche.

I mused yesterday on why Brecon Beacons should be named after Brychan , a Welsh king who may have owned slaves. To understand this, you need to know a basic rule of European history, namely that while English kings are bullying, racist, imperialistic, colonising, plundering despots, Celtic kings are romantic.