Mystery solved

Tip: if you find yourself leaving the house and for no apparent reason suddenly feeling taller, in a mildly dizzying way reminiscent of being about 14 and returning somewhere after a few months to find that everything is mysteriously just that bit shorter than it was, and the feeling doesn’t in any way settle so that after 40 minutes of walking you’re concerned that you might be in the grip of a very gentle delirium that somehow doesn’t involve a high temperature, it might just be that when you took your fleece off earlier in the day without remembering to remove your glasses you bent them so that they were in a shape reminiscent of Nicole Kidman’s post-Botox eyebrows.

Should you ever have a burning need to feel slightly taller, however, this is a neat trick to remember.

Watershed moment

The rest of today is going to have to be pretty special to live up to the massive double rainbow that bestrode London at 11.20 this morning. I was stood at the end of a platform at Vauxhall, which is a raised station, so got an eyesmacking view of the thing. It was still raining a bit and everyone was sheltering under the awnings, so I was the only one in the immediate vicinity who saw it. In fact, as history teaches us, I must therefore assume that God chose this method to make a covenant with me. Henceforth I shall be known as “Koresh”, and any donations towards the construction of my compound will be welcome.


NB: Not today’s actual rainbow

I'll say it's a Planet of Adventure

From this heartfelt page:

Should a literary masterpiece published in America surrender both its title and content decades later at the whim of contemporary British gutter slang? I cannot imagine it. Surely the least of Jack Vance's work will long endure past the demise of off-color terms in any local dialect, even that of Her Majesty... One might very well declare that I strongly overreact to this work having been retitled as The Wannek.