Not the usual litany of whinges today, rather several things to feel decidedly chuffed about ...

a) fourteen lengths of the local pool & in to work before eight o'clock had struck
b) I find the horribly expensive David Crystal Language Lectures DVD that I had assumed was irretrievably lost/half-inched by a student/ 'borrowed' by an ex-colleague & never returned
c) fiddling with the pen I broke last week, I slam it down end first (just for the hell of it) & discover - miraculously - that it works again!
d) the revised text I drew up over the weekend from a dog's breakfast of a policy document takes barely 50 minutes to check through & we're done
e) out of curiosity I drop in to the new Nias art shop down the road & find the very fountain pen I'd been looking for
f) late last night's discovery as I lay in bed listening to Radio 4 Extra trying to ignore the winds raging outside ... Elastic Planet. (A strange 'pataphysical series of absurdities narrated by the late great Oliver Postgate).

Yes, the blossom is cherrying.