A Murder of Magpies

I drew a rabbit wearing a bow tie. It looked more like a cat, so I gave it a tail.

Everyone sat silently, huddled in their own little worlds. It wasn’t particularly cold for March, but it felt cold all the same. The day hadn’t really started yet, and the dream of warm beds hovered over us all.

We made noises that an optimist might have interpreted as welcoming. Any sane person would have turned tail and fled.

I tried to look as if I was offered the use of private jets every day, sometimes twice a day before breakfast.

If you paid attention to all the put-upon people in England, you’d never have time to be put-upon yourself, which would take all the fun out of things.

The last refuge of the intelligentsia: when real life gets too difficult, go find something to read.

An academic leaves you short-staffed for a term, so you kidnap him? Come on. In the real world, no one kidnaps academics or journalists because no one wants them. It’s hard enough to get rid of them after dinner. Having them around all the time, drinking you out of house and home? Please.

he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Although who did? Were there fool sufferers who lined up, panicked there might not be enough fools to go around?

In fact, the only thing I could do was fret, and since I’d won Olympic medals in fretting, I did lots of that.

‘Have you been in England long?’ I asked, in the way English people do, usually just as the visitor has reached the arrivals lounge at Heathrow.