Things to do when you're dead...

... in Chiswick or anywhere else for that matter.
An amazing idea for ecological burial; new to me, at least
http://chemistry.about.com/b/2004/02/11/freeze-dried-dead-people.htm

As ever, I don't seem to be able to post that as a link.

Meanwhile, while still alive: All morning at work, I have been getting jumped on by people saying "Well done in the pub quiz, Imogen! I hear you were a whizz!" and similar things. I was in a pub quiz team last night, and we came second. No-one is congratulating the other members of the team. I had three and a half pints of Aspalls over the course of the evening, and I don't recall being an outstanding performer, so my first thought was a nervous fear that this was irony, & that I'd spent the evening showing off and braying loudly that I knew all the answers. But as more and more people have greeted me the same way, I begin to wonder if without noticing it I was in fact a useful member of the team.

How wonderful; my mind is a junkyard. Get your red-hot memorable trivia here!

Whatever the truth of my performance, it was fun cycling home afterwards, although as it was pouring with rain the glow of a (demi) victory wasn't enough on its own to keep me warm all the way back to Turnham Green. But cycling at night when you're somewhat tipsy (but the roads are quiet) is weirdly enjoyable. You see things you wouldn't see otherwise, and become engaged with the world with a vividness and immediacy that sober daylight and a mind full of serious issues tend to mask, normally. There's a wet fox slinking along under the bridge; the shuddering skins of puddles are lit with hectic street light; you are intensely aware of how cold your thighs are, and of each icy raindrop hitting the crown of your head, and of the pinging sound that the other raindrops make, the ones which hit the open frame of your cycling helmet instead. And the scent of the early flowering linden trees along the southern edge of Turnham Green is deliriously sweet, falling in the night like another dimension of rain parallel to the watery one...