As I seem to be less congested than anyone else this morning I made a proposal that anyone heard hacking should have to stand on one leg, sing a comic song and give everyone else five pounds.
You don't have five pounds, said Ailz.
I'm wading through the final pages of Nicholas Nickleby. Things become much lighter and breezier whenever Squeers appears. How odd that a child-abusing, money-grabbing sociopath should be the most entertaining character in the book. But, then again, we all love Mr Punch. Vis a vis Mrs Nickleby: someone might have pointed out to Dickens that it may not be such a great strategy to give a character who is designed to be annoying quite so much space to annoy us in. A dash of Mrs N is invigorating; pages of her rabbiting on tempt the reader to skip.
I don't usually back the winner in big sporting events; This is because I favour underdogs- and there's usually a good reason why they have that status; but yesterday I was cheering for Swiatek and she not only won but never really looked in danger of losing. People- commentators- have been pronouncing her name as if there is an "N" in the middle. Shwee-an-teck. Can that really be right?