While I languish in my sickbed glugging Lemsip and generally feeling woebegone, there are a couple of items I ought to bring to your attention.

The first (courtesy of Jonathan Calder) is this startling headline from Kent Online. I suspect this is one of those occasions when real life collides with a paperback potboiler by Pebblehead.

The second is to inform you of a couple of books the existence of which I have recently learned. Recently and belatedly, given that both were published almost three hundred years ago. I am going to have to learn Dutch in order to read them:

Jacobus Hondius, Black Register Of A Thousand Sins (1724)

Anon,, The Finger Of God, or Holland And Zeeland In Great Need From This Hitherto Unheard Plague Of Worms (1731?)

I ought to illustrate this postage with images of badgers and worms and sin, but instead I am going to fall into an uneasy and fevered sleep.