Getting My Own Back

The mini-heatwave has ended in thunder and heavy rain. The thunder went on all night and is still rumbling at a distance. In the middle of the storm I had a dream in which I was launching a missile in retaliation. The setting was a boarding school, the missile was set up on a stone staircase and I was having difficulty keeping the schoolboys from standing too close to it. There was a smoke blackened hole in the roof through which an earlier missile had been fired.

Head

Very little remains of Lewes Priory. It was the first Clunaic house in Britain and had one of the largest monastic churches. Thomas Cromwell may have been as delightful as Hilary Mantell makes him out to be but it's largely thanks to him that Lewes Priory no longer exists and I find it hard to think well of a man who could smash such a beautiful thing.

This magnificent stone head is in the Lewes Museum. It is one of the few carvings to have survived the wreck.

Bad Manners

I was brought up to believe that it's rude to point.

Ailz's dad used to do it all the time. It usually meant he had some unspeakably obnoxious opinion to impart. Ok, he was a decent enough bloke but his opinions were grim- and the pointing made them grimmer.

And today, on the front page of my Mother's newspaper, is a photo of Boris Johnson pointing across the aisle of the House of Commons- presumably at Jeremy Corbyn. Oh, the cooked up drama! The aggression! What a bad example it sets to the youth of the nation!