Only when one has seen a Control Office at first-hand does one realise the vast amount of unsparing but largely unsung work that is behind the eventual publication, perhaps, of a paragraph in this journal's Motive Power Miscellany recording the appearance, within hours of the complete blockage of a main line, of many of its trains, passenger and freight, on routes quite foreign to them; and of effective emergency services either side of the disaster area.

And if you look carefully at the card house, you will see that top two cards are aces of clubs.

I fancied that we — I and who? — hammocked among the summer breezes.

Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner!