A CD reissue of Ivory Cutlery's 'Privilege' arrives in the post. I think the Oldie wants my honest opinion. I know I'll love it.

The op went well, thanks to the expertise of the consultants at the James Paget in Gorleston. Thankfully, they waited until afterwards to explain just how serious my injury had been. My elbow joint had been crushed by the impact, turning it from a nice big sphere to a bag of much smaller marbles. The humerus had snapped like a stick of celery, and the CT scan images were pretty grim. It's all now held together in a very close approximation of its original form with plates, screws, pins and wires. The rest is down to nature and some pretty hardcore physiotherapy, both of which take time. However, I am now pretty confident that I'll be restored to full health eventually. I'm a natural rebel, but I know when orders need to be heeded. Anyway, I won't mope about it here any longer. As you were...

The other day, I did something I haven't done for ages. I read the Guardian. In it was a long article by a Guardian hack about how he had revolutionised his life and electricity bills by switching entirely to low-energy light bulbs over the last six months. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I read the article, but there seemed to be an overwhelming air of "aren't I great?" sanctimony about the whole affair, with this chap clearly regarding himself as some kind of frontiersman.

I am not a journalist for the nation's most environmentally minded newspaper, and yet Schloss Cheeseford has been equipped from basement to attic with low-energy bulbs for the last 13 years (with the last 1996 original only just having come out of service). Given that they cost over a tenner apiece when I began my own energy-saving crusade, I think I'd be able to write a better (and more sanctimonious) article about the wonder of CFLs than some Johnny-come-lately who waited until they were 50p a go, and who seems to have more light sources in his modest townhouse than Pinewood Studios. However, I know that if I'd pitched just such an article, I'd have been lucky to receive a polite rejection note. So, how do these people get these dull, obvious articles commissioned? Compromising negatives of the commissioning editor? Being able to call the commissioning editor Dad? What ever it is, I don't got it.

What I do got is a fractured distal humerus, my Grauniad reading having been something I did to pass the time in hospital. I go back in on Tuesday to have some fairly serious ironmongery inserted into my arm. Cruelly, it was my right arm, so typing is out of the question, and I find myself dictating this painfully slowly into a computer that throws up interesting alternatives for the words that I thought I said. Knowing my luck, I will now be deluged with commissions that I am unable to fulfil. I am now off to buy some incandescent bulbs which am going to leave on all of the time. So there.

Justin Lee Collins says that Brucie should step down from hosting Strictly Come Dancing. He's right.

There should always be a space for Brucie on British television, but it shouldn't necessarily be a weekly live show that usually runs for over an hour. When he was on the Gen Game, he was the best ringmaster TV's ever had - watch those old recordings and you'll see a man in complete control of his domain, making sure that hapless punters hit their marks and get the laughs. The Equity strike-bound Sunday Night at the London Palladium featuring just him and Norman Wisdom is a breathless masterclass in entertainment, and I speak as someone for whom a little Wisdom goes a very very long way. Unfortunately, I can't watch Strictly without thinking "Oh, Bruce, no" far too many times for my own good.

As in so many things, Wogan leads the way. He's going from the Radio 2 breakfast show on his own terms, with ratings higher than ever, and with the grace to wish his successor the very best. I think the experience of his BBC1 chat show still haunts him - he overstayed his welcome there and had to take a lot of flak from the press as a result. Live and learn. He also stepped down from the Eurovision Song Contest on an apparent point of principle, with honour intact. Despite being one of his greatest fans, I sensed him descending further into self-parody year by year, and am glad he got out when he did. The only downer there was that the commentary job didn't go to Paddy O'Connell, who gets Eurosong utterly and would have been great, but I have to admit that my dire predictions for Graham Norton's commentary didn't come to pass, and the whole experience began an unlikely rehabilitation of Norton, compounded by his pitch-perfect 'one foot in the grave' dig at Michael McIntyre on BAFTA night.

As I type, a solution has occurred to me. Make Forsyth one of the judges. He'd be there and he could bring his full experience to bear on the situation, but he wouldn't have to carry the whole show. Failing that, just shove him in TC1 with a piano, an orchestra, Tarby, Lynchy, some chairs, some tap shoes and an audience. Agreeing with Justin Lee Collins is slightly annoying, by the way. I hear from people in the industry that he's a sweetie, and that's nice to know, but it doesn't stop me thinking that he should step down from television.

On Facebook, a friend of mine was musing about the cost of certain items in certain high street stores. Knowing him to be a man of sense, I expressed amazement that he bothered with the high street for anything anymore. I bought both of my computers online - the desktop machine I'm typing this on now was two-thirds of the price of an identical unit in PC World, while the laptop came from PC World's website, and was an exclusive online offer. I get through a lot of blank DVDs, and am consistently astonished at the price high street stores expect me to pay. My DVD recorder came from Amazon.co.uk, and was half the price of the same unit anywhere else. A while back, I needed a replacement mini-jack for my headphones. Maplin wanted £2.99, for which price I could get 5 of the buggers from a chap on eBay. Finally, as one of the few people left still using a fountain pen (I think it's just me and my GP), I've been wondering why you can get green and purple Parker cartridges on the continent but not in Britain. Answer - you can get them here, if you go to the Battersea Pen Home. If you have a credit card, a computer and a willingness to wait a couple of days for the stuff to arrive, buying online is the way forward.

Of course, there are some things that money can't buy (mainly because they're crap), and in my journalistic career, I've amassed a fair few of them. Promotional mugs seem to proliferate - a recent purge of the cupboard brought forth a green one for 30 years of Picador books, a black 'Wake up and smell the coffee' one for Bloomsbury's Encarta dictionary, and a rather nice bone china one extolling the virtues of Sutton Publishing's historical titles. Having amassed enough pleasing non-promotional drinking vessels, including a repro White Star Line Titanic-era 3rd class mug and a superb 'Yorkshire Television Colour Production' mug hand made by my good friend Marcus Bernard of TV Ark, the publishing freebies are going to the charity shop, even 'Wake up and smell Nigel Newton's bank balance'. This has, however, set me to wondering what was the best freebie I've ever received? On balance, it's probably the Pure Evoke 1 digital radio in the kitchen, given to selected hacks in the glory days of Oneword, although the Weidenfeld and Nicolson 50th anniversary anthology that I got signed by both Lord Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson is a keeper, as is the t-shirt promoting my mate Andy Miller's book Tilting at Windmills (Slogan: "A hollow victory is still a victory"), even though it has never ever fit me. Does anyone else have good free stuff to declare?

This blog has a new crusade. It is to get every right-thinking person with an Internet connection to pass critical comment on the strange-looking, dull-sounding Chris de Burgh. This isn't unpleasantness for unpleasantness' sake. The idea is to get the multi-talentless cousin of Roly Mo writing so many letters and emails accusing people of being 'bitter and unfulfilled' that he never sings a single hemi-demi-semi-quaver again in his life. Go on, you know it makes sense.

Oi, Chris. Your music's shit and you look like the badger world's most notorious nonce.

How not to respond to a bad review: Writing a letter to the reviewer, calling them 'bitter and unfulfilled' and inventing childish names. Like Chris de Burgh just has. Hasn't the stumpy peddler of mediocrity got enough money not to give a tinker's cuss what anyone thinks of him? Also, does he not realise that this very act shows him to be 'bitter and unfulfilled' himself? Why else would a multi-million selling artist need the validation of a newspaper critic? Is it because he knows he's NBG? Finally, referring to the reviewer, Peter Crawley, as 'Creepy Crawley' is a bit rich coming from one of the most sinister-looking creatures in the pop business.

Normally I have no interest in the comings and goings of Jack Tweed, but I found myself reading The Snu the other day and puzzling over a detail of the report of his arrest. Tweed has been charged with rape, but his co-accused has not. The paper described the sexual activity involved as a "roasting". Now, I have no practical experience of said manoeuvre, but my understanding of it is that it involves two gentlemen partaking equally of a lady's pleasures, one at each end. Not being a lawyer, I don't know how this works, but if it was rape, shouldn't both men have been charged? Can anyone explain to me why Tweed has been and his mate hasn't?

For a couple of years or so, the bookshelf above my monitor has had an A5 envelope poked between the paperbacks, containing various items of correspondence. The content is nothing stunning or revelatory, but they're things I'd like to keep safe all the same. With this in mind, I've been eyeing them up for ages thinking "Must put that envelope away somewhere". So I did, and now I can't find it. It's not too much of a worry, as I know that the moment I stop looking for it, it'll turn up. That happened last week with a tape recorder manual. Shortly after locating a PDF on the Internet, I found my yellowing hard copy. If I weren't so dismissive of such things, I'd blame a playful spirit.

So farewell then, Keith Waterhouse. While I find his later novels near-unreadable, I've always had a soft spot for his earlier work, and he was one of the few good things in the Daily Mail. Apart from which, how could one not love a human being who so clearly set out to resemble a spaniel?

Sad news indeed about Simon Dee. I made contact with him when I was researching Turned Out Nice Again and I have a couple of very cordial letters from him. Sadly, I was already about a year late with the manuscript when I found him, and I never did make it to Winchester. Fortunately, I had plenty of background on his chat show years from producers and executives, and I tried to be as fair as I could. I had to note their comments that he was a bloody nightmare to work with, but I also had to make clear his importance in the history of the chat show - in UK terms, Dee and Eamonn Andrews laid the foundations - and also to give praise where it was due. On his day, he was a good interviewer - someone who listened and engaged his brain accordingly, but who also had the chutzpah to ask the apparently unaskable. Unfortunately, he seemed to believe his own publicity, and, I suspect, also suffered from bad management. As a result, he alienated the people he needed most, and in later life seemed more inclined to blame a nebulous conspiracy for his downfall, rather than his own hubris. As Bill Cotton said "There was a time when he was a very powerful force on British television and he could have gone anywhere. But he was just a bloody fool". Indeed, but his show was one where magic sometimes happened, and I make no apologies for reminding you all of this from the 21 September 1968 Dee Time:

All too often nowadays, I put down a newspaper having concluded that its writers know little and care even less about the subjects of their articles. I want authoritative voices, not some 'will this do?' chancer who's cribbed the lot off Wikipedia. I'm not entirely sure if it's them or me: was it always this way, and I only notice it now because I'm better informed?

One of my pitifully few must-reads is James May's column in the Daily Telegraph each Saturday. While Jeremy Clarkson's in the Sunday Times telling its readers how he'd run the world (and making many of them profoundly glad that he isn't) and the Hamster's set up his wheel in the Daily Mirror, May ploughs his own wildly meandering furrow in the Torygraph. Despite being in the Motoring section, May's rambles frequently have only the slenderest connection to cars. Very often, only the last paragraph even mentions motoring, in a manner that just about connects with the preceding few hundred words. And that, dear reader, is the joy of the exercise. Rather audaciously, May uses his platform to explore subjects that interest him, including trains, music and the contents of his kitchen cupboard. It's a weekly visit to the mind of an agreeably anoraky middle-aged chap who actually knows stuff and gives a toss about it, so, as an anorak nearing middle age, is it any wonder that I'm a fan?

When May appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, the host, jokingly, said that he hoped never to be trapped in a lift with May. Given Ross' own well-documented geek credentials, I thought the remark, even in jest, was beneath him. I'd rather be trapped in a pub (as can happen at high tide in the White Cross in Richmond) with May, but if it came down to it, I suspect time stuck in a lift with him would pass most pleasantly. In this cynical, jaded age, May is an enthusiast, and a pretty good standard-bearer for enthusiasts of all kinds. My only hope is that nobody at the Telegraph ever sits him down and asks him to write more about cars.

Cemeteries are an endless source of fascination to me. In my local necropolis, there are two plots of note. One is over 100 years old, and is the family vault for James Maconochie, a pioneer of food canning and co-proprietor of Maconochie Brothers, whose first factory was located in my street. If you have relatives who served in World War 2, ask them about Maconochie stew. Another dates from a mere 20 years ago, and commemorates a man whose nickname, emblazoned on the headstone for all to see and scratch their heads over, was 'Pimp'. How did he get the name? Was he pimply? Was he Lowestoft's answer to Percy Blakeney? Or was he just a ponce?

It all reminds me slightly of the night when a friend admitted to having a relative with a shady past, whose tabloid nickname had been 'Harry the Ponce'. I'm guessing that Harry's gravestone doesn't bear this legend.

The news that the Government is considering various measures against file-sharers, including cutting off their Internet connections is more amusing than worrying, from where I'm sitting. After receiving David Geffen's hospitality, of course Mandy's got to make harrumphing 'something must be done' noises. Is it even remotely enforceable, though? Save for a few well-publicised legal actions brought by the RIAA in 2002 or thereabouts, the threatened wave of mass prosecutions has failed to materialise. A few people have received legal letters from computer game developers demanding compensation for alleged file-sharing naughtiness, but all can quite reasonably claim that it must have been someone leeching off their unsecured wireless broadband and tell the beaks to piss off. The Pirate Bay verdict has not resulted in the site's closure, and those responsible for running the site remain free men, despite ludicrous sentences being handed down. Even if it were possible to monitor every last bit of data sent or received, it would, effectively, criminalise the vast majority of computer users. If you've looked at even a single clip on YouTube, you've almost certainly been a party to 'copyright theft'. Most of those computer users will also be voters.

I share files. I've put things on YouTube to illustrate points I want to make here, I use Bit Torrent, and I download music and video from blogs and other sites. However, none of the stuff that I send or receive is available commercially. I encode and share records and archive TV programmes that haven't a cat in hell's chance of a DVD or CD release, but which a small number of people still want to see/hear. Some of the things I've hoovered off the Web have been vital for my researches into light entertainment. If I want something, and it's available to buy, I buy it. Legally, there's no distinction between sharing the contents of a commercial DVD and a forgotten comedy show retrieved from a Betamax tape, but, morally and ethically, I think there's a considerable gulf between the two acts. Just recently, I saw a newly-released DVD of a 1970s TV series turning up on Bit Torrent sites on the day of its official release. I'm afraid that's not cricket, chaps.

Maybe I'm just post-rationalising my own transgressions, but I can't see a problem with sharing commercially-unavailable material. For one thing, doing so drives a coach and horses through the distasteful practice of bootlegging for profit. For another, sharing an obscurity can help create awareness and interest for an eventual commercial release. The DVD of the Armando Iannucci Shows, an excellent series overlooked at the time of transmission in autumn 2001 because of various world events, came about largely because comedy fans had been sharing the shows online in the years since, bringing them to a new audience who'd missed them when they went out. The fans then began lobbying for a proper release. Hell, I've even seen things that I've encoded turning up as the source of clips in TV programmes - in which case, the broadcasters are the ones doing the illegal downloading. How do you like them apples?

If Geffen gets his way, will I be left without an Internet connection? Believe when see. In the meantime, the 'creative industries' should stop insulting their customers and potential customers, cease bellyaching about file-sharing and simply try to work out ways of making it generate revenue for them. Home taping didn't kill music.

Keeping with the theme of digital radio instant nostalgia, was the Digital 1 multiplex so named because it had only one station worth listening to? The demise of Oneword was a sad day for UK radio. On a budget that wouldn't cover Mark Damazer's annual expenditure on coffee and Danish pastries, it provided a good, intelligent, broad-based speech radio service, with nary a phone-in to be heard. Maybe I'm biased, having had several mates who worked there, and having nearly bagged a show of my own just before it went tits up (the first time, that is), but it was a good, talented little outfit, producing splendid stuff. If the backers had held their nerve a little longer, who's to say it wouldn't have turned the corner?

Regular visitors to this corner of the WWW will know already that schloss Cheeseford is home to all manner of strange, wonderful technology. My family of open-reel tape recorders rule the roost, but there's room for more recent obsolescence such as the object on the left. That's what affordable digital radios looked like in 2000. Well, I say affordable. When launched, the Psion Wavefinder was £299, and you needed a PC with USB ports for it to be any use at all. I sprung for mine when they came down to £99 a year later. At the time, I was reviewing radio for the New Statesman and I felt I needed to keep up with all of this digital lark. That and the fact that, despite putting my life in peril by hanging out of my 2nd floor flat window with an electrically-unsafe drill to install a suitable antenna on the side wall, my VHF reception was still far from perfect. Unfortunately, I chose to opt in at the moment that the BBC dropped the bitrates of all their stations (save for Radio 3), so I was merely swapping one set of sonic compromises for another, but with timer recording and other rather neat features, it was a worthwhile bit of kit. When it worked.

I've lost count of the number of times I reinstalled the drivers and the front-end software. I unplugged it, plugged it back in again, found a piece of third-party software that disabled the resource-hogging lights (I should take some video of the lights in action. They're oddly calming. When they work.), and I tried it with slimline salad dressing. Unfortunately, every which way I turned, it was a buggy piece of crap. I kept it for dire emergencies, but came to rely on satellite and Freeview for my radio reception, as well as an improved VHF aerial installation when I moved to my present house. Finally, when Windows XP Service Pack 2 came out, it was bye bye Wavefinder, as Microsoft had done something under XP's bonnet to make the Wavefinder even more of a dud than it had been before. I hung it on the far wall of my office as a lesson to myself never again to be an early adopter.

Then, last week, I read on Mike Brown's excellent TX list that the ruddy things work again in XP SP3. I went through the rigmarole of reinstalling it, and yes, it works. Sometimes. I had hoped that having a computer several times more powerful than the one I had in 2000 might have helped the Wavefinder realise its full potential, but no. It's still a buggy piece of crap. And yet I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

To my great surprise, I've just had a phone call from Bob McDowall. To my even greater surprise, it was a long, constructive conversation about the show, the issues and Radio 2 in general. He said a lot of things that I suspect would be heard sympathetically by a lot of his harshest critics, and he said that he'd love to say them in public, but that he was unable to make any definitive statements until he's talked to Bob Shennan (currently on holiday) about the situation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Mail story is not quite how he remembers what happened, and I know the problems involved in relying on a single source, so a contrary view is always instructive. What he did say, though, was that he genuinely didn't want Malcolm to leave and that he was and is looking for ways to incorporate relevant dance band music into the programme. He also corrected some of my assertions about gram library usage, which I'm happy to take on board - the process of transferring rare material for use in programmes is ongoing, and his view is that he's happy to spend whatever it costs to do the programme right. The information that he's an ex-BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra musician goes some way to scotching (no pun, etc) the idea that he's a faceless bureaucrat, meddling in perfectly good programmes.

Anyway, I'll be continuing to lobby for BBC Radio 2 to reinstate its commitment to dance band music, but I'll be easing off on Bob McDowall, in hopes that, when he and his programme team have had time to regroup, they'll confound all of the critics.

Two reviews for the papperbok edition of Turned Out Nice Again this weekend. In the Sindie, Brandon Robshaw says " I thought I was going to love it at first – there are fascinating accounts of the early variety acts...The evolution...is entertainingly told...But there is too much emphasis on the behind-the-scenes stuff, the hierarchies, management structures, procedures, and budgets." Agree to disagree. I've always found what goes on backstage as fascinating as what happens out front, and have also always believed that the writers, producers, session musicians and crew members are the most reliable sources of information. Also, in this case, hierarchies and budgets play a large part in shaping what ends up on our screens. Still, Mr Robshaw thought it worthy of 3 stars out of 5, and expressed his reservations in a polite, constructive manner. Can't say fairer than that. Just one thing, the Parkinson show he cites was 1982, Richard Burton wasn't involved and if he still wants to see it, the section I write about is on YouTube. Meanwhile, in the Mail on Sunday (4-star review not yet online), Simon Shaw says that I'm "an excellent companion to have on this visit down memory lane". That's very kind.

Also in the MoS was this piece about Malcolm Laycock's exit from Radio 2's Sunday night schedules. The Mail stable's anti-BBC agenda is well-documented, but as this story seems to come from a reliable source - Mr Laycock himself - we can, if we can bring ourselves to dismiss the Mail's motive, trust it. So, it appears that the dance band element of the programme was canned simply because executive producer Bob McDowall didn't like it. In which case, was there nobody around who would have happily taken over the dance band side of the show, so that McDowall didn't have to sully his lugholes with Jack Hylton, Jack Payne, Jack Hylton again and the band at the Brixton Astoria? The show still has a constituency, and it's one that has every right to be served.

The decision to get drop the dance bands was symbolic of a problem with the BBC that needs to be flagged up a lot more than it currently is. While the Corporation is impeccably, and quite rightly, anti-racist (The BBC's 'urban music' digital station 1Xtra has a weekly reach of 491,000, while the Asian Network has a reach of 473,000. So, their pulling power is only about 30% more than Laycock's listenership, but would anyone even dare suggest replacing either station with something else entirely? Feel free to take your time in answering that one.), anti-sexist and anti-most other isms you'd care to name, it is deeply ageist. This would be offensive enough if it weren't also a complete and utter fallacy that you have to be old to appreciate dance band music. I'm 36, and I'm far from alone. The BBC's entertainment programming was built on live relays from the major London hotels, and that precious weekly half-hour of music was a direct link to the Corporation's origins. It should be viewed in a similar light to the Tower of London's ravens. I'd be interested to know whether that figure of 360,000 listeners is from before or after the decision to narrow the programme's focus, and how many have deserted the show since?

Below the Mail story, there's a host of comments including one from 'Deanna of London': "Awwww poor diddums, a measly 24 thousand pounds for 52 hours work? I expect the people who work in a supermarket who take home around 300 measly single pound notes for 52 hours work, will be sobbing for the injustice to this poor man!!". You're missing the point, Deanna. Laycock's saying that the 52 hours of radio involve far more than 52 hours of work, indeed that it's a full-time job - scripting, checking discographies, timings, creating running orders, etc. Given some of the other salaries given to Radio 2 presenters, the asked-for £38,000 for a year of impeccably-researched, meticulously-prepared programming that credits the listener with intelligence looks like a bargain.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on a bench near Lowestoft station, sharing my cod and chips with the youngest member of the Swiss Family Cheeseford. The sun was out, the nosh was lovely, my ankle is on the mend, and I thought that things couldn't get much better. And then, I looked towards Lowestoft station and noticed a set of carriages unlike those that haul the normal services in and out of town. A mixture of mark 2 and mark 1 stock, I deduced, leading to the logical conclusion that there would be a locomotive of some note at the front. So there was - BR Britannia class 70013 Oliver Cromwell was paying a visit with a steam enthusiasts' excursion from Liverpool Street to Norwich, then to Lowestoft, then back down the East Suffolk line to Stratford. Cheeseford Junior showed enormous interest in the big, noisy machine, and having established that it would be in town for a couple of hours, I resolved to go home, grab my camcorder and capture its departure, which I share with you now. Like James May in yesterday's Telegraph, I'll admit to a preference for early diesel locomotives. Faced with a choice of a famous steam loco pulling modern carriages and a modern locomotive pulling vintage carriages, the smell of warm leather and moquette always beats any amount of atmospheric smoke. However, I did feel a pang of jealousy that I wasn't on the Easterling as it chuffed away back to the capital.

I've just heard about the death of Les Paul. I really, honestly, thought he was good for the ton and then a few more. His mother achieved a great age, and, when I saw him live at Iridium in New York in 2002, he looked indestructible - even if a stroke had robbed him of some of his dexterity. However, I don't think anyone can call 94 a bad innings, and he packed a hell of a lot in to his time on Earth. Pioneering and popularising, if not actually inventing, the solid-body electric guitar. Creating 78rpm soundscapes that still sound futuristic as all get out. Inspiring Ampex to make the first practical multi-track tape recorder. I grew up with his music, and I still revisit those amazing, astonishing Capitol sides regularly. When he struck up 'Brazil' on that night in New York 7 years ago, I found myself crying a little. I'd played the record to death, and now I was no more than 20 feet away from the man who'd made it, hearing him play it live. After the show, he sat at a table and signed stuff for anyone who wanted it, which was just about everyone in the audience. I waited my turn, shook his hand and we had a brief chat. I tried not to gush. I didn't need to. Without being arrogant, he knew precisely how great and important he was. RIP Red Hot Red.

Maybe Bob McDowall has voodoo powers. Or maybe I was pissed. We shall never know. Both are possible explanations for how I passed out on Sunday morning, sending my full 14 stone 13 pounds crashing down on my right ankle and resulting in the accompanying picture, taken at Stroud railway station. It happened while spending a weekend visiting relatives in Gloucestershire, and such a lovely time was being had that not even the injury and the fact that Mrs Cheeseford's beloved Nissan Sunny had been declared DOA (hence the need to return by rail) could put a crimp in the festivities. I'm currently finding PRICE easy to comply with, and doing OK at avoiding H, R and M of HARM, but I reserve the right to ignore the advice on the A.

Crossing London as a temporary cripple was an interesting experience, second-guessing rude bastards with their tinny little iPod headphones blocking out the outside world, allowing them to rush about like headless chickens, oblivious to the fact that they've just nearly knocked over someone whose stopping and turning abilities are considerably less than theirs. In one case, I found myself shouting something obscene at the person who'd almost sent me flying. Oddly enough, the name I called him got through his aural insulation, and he turned round and asked if I was talking to him, in a manner that he obviously thought menacing, bless him. I said that I was and that I was glad I'd got his attention, as it might in future make him more aware of his surroundings when walking around like he owned the pavement. His response: "You can talk about walking". Choosing not to debate the meaninglessness of the utterance, I replied: "Yes, I can. And if you'd like to carry on being able to walk, I'd advise that you go on your way right now". Which he did. I'm not a violent sort, and as can be seen from the picture, I was dressed like Alec Guinness at the end of The Lavender Hill Mob. I can only put it down to the fact that I had a walking stick, and the expression of a man who knew how to shove it up someone's arse.