Philobiblon

In the field of pure coincidence, I’ve been contemplating different ceilings – first the one that collapsed in Strasbourg, bringing a (probably) all-too-brief period of sanity that sees the European Parliament continuing to work in one city. This allowed Chameleon on Redemption Blues to do her usual astonishingly comprehensive job on the Britblog roundup.

Second, a piece from the Sydney Morning Herald about possums has taken me back to my Australian youth, when I had a study with a flat tin roof, underneath a magnificent 120-year-old oak tree (now sadly demolished, with the house, for the construction of half-a-dozen no doubt hideous “villas”).

It teemed with possums, who used to enjoy bouncing back and forth from tree to roof – one cause to which I’d attribute strong nerves (I’m not the sort of person who jumps at sudden noises), and my ability to sleep through pretty much anything.

Yes, that’s a roof not ceiling – the ceiling comes into the story when the possums got inside the roof, and one day when I was sitting in the living room I realised that there was fluid, dripping through the ceiling on to my head…

(And yes, an Australian childhood might also help to explain my strong stomach. Have I told you about the funnel-web spiders that used to enjoy swinging on the back door…?)