Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the ho… - Michael Palin

Lots of traffic heading into town. One dirty, smoke-belching van makes me so angry that if I’d been alongside I think I would have had a go at the driver. I’d rather see pollution wardens than parking wardens but I suppose there’s no money in pollution prevention.

Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Eric and I try to analyse this phenomenon and decide it can only be that the Swedes have no sense of humour of their own and have to import it.