The official guesstimate for the death toll of the Bam earthquake is now 25,000 people.

Put 25,000 people into the old Wembley Stadium, and you wouldn't even quarter fill it. But 25,000 is also the number of 25 to 29 year olds in Camden, or all the women in Camden aged 25 to 34, both of which are harder, somehow, to imagine wiping out than quarter of Wembley stadium.

School's out! Finally reached the end of term, after bringing in a sick note for the nasal equivalent of Hoover Dam flu, the osteopathic mirror of a shivering skeleton flu. Then three days in a monastery escaping from crocodile pits with two planks, two crates, a metal pole and play-acting my life. This wasn't a result of hallucinogenic over-ingestion of Lemsip Max Cold and Flu, nor was it something that happened in Narnia.

‘Before Will [Young], I got up, went to work, came home, had tea, maybe a phonecall, then bed. Now, I can’t wait to get up and get on that computer, on those messages, I’m talking to someone here in Holland, someone there in Belgium, it’s like an extended family, you know?’.

Never quite sure why I do what I do.

I want to write a post on words or phrases that sound rude but aren't, 'cept all I can think of is 'massive rectitude', thank you Evelyn Waugh.

Nice maps of Shoreditch.