Compiled by DON GORDON-BROWN

NO-ONE apologises over here if they bump into you in the streets or on the Underground walkways, but please don't make the mistake of thinking that makes English people very, very rude.
It's finally dawned on me that all they are is very, very confused.
They simply have no idea as to whether they should walk to the right or left of you. As you are in the same boat, collisions occur more often than not.
The confusion arises because the Poms can't quite sort out the difference between what's right - and left. And if they really want to be island English – or mainstream European.
Out on the streets, they've wisely adopted the Australian model and everyone drive on the left. It's safer that way and so far so good. But as soon as they alight from their cars or double-decker buses, they're not so sure of foot.
Some of the Underground walkways call on them to keep to the right. Some say keep to the left. Come to the end of pedestrian tunnels and the up escalator is more often than not over on the right hand side. Hop on the escalator and the signs demand that you stand to the right. It's like they hate the French but somehow want to be a bit like them?
It's a pathetic mishmash which results only in confusion – and collisions. You can see it in people's eyes as they approach you on the street. Will I go left? Right? A lot of people take the wise middle road. Thump! There might have been a time once when you'd say sorry, but a long time ago, people just got sick and tired of saying sorry a hundred times a day.

YOU'VE probably heard about the massive flooding across Old Blighty over recent weeks? Some areas had a couple of inches – it's lucky we weren't all drowned!
Most of the time here you get what they call a mizzle - a misty drizzle. Even before the recent heavier downpours that Australians would pass off as sun showers, Fright at the Poms was amazed at just how quickly puddles form on roads and footpaths after a half-hour of mizzle. In fact, just the other day I noticed that there was a three-metre long section of pathway beside the Tower of London that didn't collect water during a mizzlestorm. I've alerted the local council authorities and they've promised to fix it immediately.
Perhaps Australian roads and pathways are equally un-level and just as pot-holed? Only that we don't notice it as much after rain because we've got this really silly in-built heating and drying device, called - and I've got to dredge this up from a fading and distant memory - the sun?

REMEMBER that old Bazza McKenzie movie and the joke about London streets being full of dogshit!
It's true. The funny thing is you never see all that many dogs about, so they must sneak out with their owners late at night to drop their rancid coils. The dogs, that is. And not little lapdogs at that: plumb in the middle of the very footpath you take to and from the Tube each day are large mounds of the stuff.
Of course, all this excreta supposedly finally gets washed into the Thames by the aforementioned mizzle. That's a lot of dogshit in a city of some eight million souls and a proportionate number of dog arseholes.
All very disconcerting when a letter arrives at your doorstep to proudly advise that the supplier of your domestic water needs is none other than an outfit called Thames Water.