Section 2 describes a C*-action on Grassmann manifolds and gives the corresponding Białynicki-Birula decomposition.

Accordingly, after a vast amount of moaning and crying up-stairs, and much damping of foreheads, and vinegaring of temples, and hartshorning of noses, and so forth […]

It's a little trick called retcon, short for retroactive continuity, […] Yet I'm unsure even Millar is fully aware of the power given him by the retcon.

‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’