You will have noticed a distinct lack of gung ho Hooting Yard activity of late. This is due to the usual reasons, viz. a vacant space between Mr Key’s ears where normally are forged the great iron girders of prose. This vacancy itself has been occasioned, I think, by a hare-brained intention to rearrange all the books on the bookshelves. The prospect of doing so has stunned me. I ought to point out that I have no pressing need to reshelve, and I may still abandon the idea. But just the other day, gazing at the teeming rows of books, I thought how pleasant it would be to see them all in a different order. What stops me from immediately getting on with it is a sense of not being entirely sure how I wish to rearrange. There are, after all, so many different schemes one can apply, and I am ludicrously unsure about which to proceed with. So instead of reshelving, I gaze, and think, and make a cup of tea, and smoke a fag, and stare out of the window, and generally faff about to no good purpose.

At least Huw Halfbacon raked the gravel. That was a proper use of time on earth.