Journal

Thursday, February 06, 2003
According to this article I'm 30% more likely to die of heart disease
and 70% more likely to die of a stroke than people who shave every day.
Bugger.

Meanwhile, an endangered Patagonian Toothfish (AKA the Chilean Sea Bass, which is his menu name) has migrated to the Arctic, seeking a better life, freedom from overfishing, and probably planning a campaign to have his name changed on menus to the Oozing Pimplefish.

And incidentally, I just realised that the Daily Telegraph obituaries are on line. This may not mean much to you, but when the Telegraph Obituaries get good, they are like the strangest short stories you can imagine, filled with inexplicable details and goofy grace notes. This one, for example, reads like a collaboration between P. G. Wodehouse and Gene Wolfe, with such passages as:--

Despite a brisk code of discipline, Singleton took a laissez-faire approach out of the classroom. Every November 5 the smallest boy in the school was sent down a tunnel to light the very core of the bonfire. None, so far as anyone can recall, was ever lost.

and

What central heating there existed was not always effective, or even switched on. Boys were permitted to capture owls and keep them in the fives court, provided they caught enough sparrows to feed them. One boy recalls being given the task of rearing a lamb to which he developed some emotional attachment. The animal, called Lottie, disappeared shortly before the school's Christmas feast, and the boy realised what had happened only when he was the first to be summoned for second helpings.