I will never stop thanking...

... the person who led me to this site. Oddly, this person is also my "boss" - quite the admission, when we consider my general opinion of going to work!!

When I am with him, I make a face like this puppet...



...which tells me he must be doing something right - even if he does look exactly like this man:

I shall have my rings delivered by an owl

According to The Guardian, my wedding ring can be delivered to my very hand by a specially trained owl! Can he also deliver them to my beloved? Will he travel to Canada? And, more importantly: would a beaver be more appropriate?

This and many other questions will probably remain unanswered forever, but still, it is pleasant to speculate. In the meantime, I give you photographic evidence of said owl with his handler, Mike.




(Other ring-delivering-owl outfits can be found here and here; if you get married at Dalhousie Castle, you can have a Mexican Striped Owl to 'do the honours' rather than a humble barn owl. Heavens to murgatroyd - whatever next? Premier league footballers lining up the owls for their own nuptials? Oh.)

I wonder

I worship at the feet of Dr Ben Goldacre

Yes it is true. I live with, and will be marrying, a scientist (and a very scientisty scientist at that - he positively DRIPS with science from all parts of his body, particularly his gigantic brain - but is also able to chop down trees/build a vegetable garden/organise roadtrips round California/speak 4 languages/make compost, etc).

At least once a day great gusts of laughter shoot out of him as he reads yet another claim about 'detox' or 'aligning meridians' or 'kinesthesiology' or some such nonsense; it is as if all these things, and particularly homeopathy, were invented merely to amuse him, in the same way that things like comedians and comic papers amuse other people.

I often squeak a bit about the time a physiotherapist cured my frozen shoulder by sticking a needle in it ("right, this is sort of acupuncture and it's the last resort, and I'm not guaranteeing anything"), but generally I agree, for there is such a thing as Reason, and whereas acupuncture sort of makes sense, homeopathy does not make sense and 'detox' makes least sense of all. (Please do watch the film from Sense about Science and laugh and laugh!)

My best friend once gave a session with a Reiki 'massage therapist' for Christmas (sadly, it was not administered by this person, who does Reiki massage AND animal training - which definitely makes sense). It was very pleasant in an "Islington-aromatherapy-candles-and-upmarket-whale-moanings" way, but - as is the way with Reiki massage - couldn't really be described as a massage, as it did not involve actual touching. As this useful article explains, "The practitioner holds his or her hands a few inches or farther away from the patient's body and manipulates the energy field from there". Quite brilliant, I am sure you will agree.

But I digress. There is not much to say other than the book I show above, Bad Science by Dr Ben Goldacre, fell into my hands a few weeks ago thanks to an unheated branch of WHSmith at St Pancreatitis station. I knew he would find it interesting, but little did I know that it would also cause the scientist with whom I live to shout with laughter, much in the same way that the simple-minded used to shout with laughter at Mr Blobby.

And now I am reading it, and it is brilliant. If you did now know this already, it is the work of Dr Ben Goldacre, who has a column in The Guardian called - yes, you have guessed it! - Bad Science. He is a hot tamale AND he is really clever AND he thinks "Dr" Gillian McKeith is an idiot! I love him, and am spending a very great part of the day looking at things on his website, particularly this very very funny piece, in which someone making a lot of money out of peoples' insecurities and ignorance is exposed as a total knobber.

Enjoy, my friends, and remember: if it doesn't make sense, it may not be true.

Coming soon: Does God exist?

I explain winter in Montreal to my best friend in London via the power of email

"Am suffering from a strange Montreal malaise which is this: at about 11 o'clock some trucks drive very slowly down the road making a noise like a kind of clown's horn but x 100 and over and over like an ambulance. this is to get people out of their houses because the "deneigeuse" is coming (such a lovely word, is in fact you guessed it snow plow) and then the deneigeuses come along and make a fucking racket taking the snow off the road and shooting it into the truck behind (using a souffleuse, aka snowblower) which is then taken to a dump outside montreal and put in an old quarry. Then the little tiny ones shoot down the pavements and frankly unless you're moving fast you can get run over. there are special patrols to make sure people are not driving them drunk under the influence and on the CBC (yawn P, did I tell you how horribly boring the media is here - no wonder they spend all their time outside even in -25) there are often stories of tiny snowblower drivers reversing over cars. anyway the point is they do it at 11pm and wake me up just as i'm dozing off after 4 episodes of Gossip Girl on the trot (have you seen it P? quite perfect for a nite in.)".