In the end he was blood from head to hocks and all over the place like a mad woman's custard.

Am I alone in feeling smug (if slatternly) about the news that super-clean homes are a breeding ground for infection? Apparently, all that bleach is bad not just for germs but for children's immune systems, too, and paradoxically causes more disease than it prevents. Not round my gaff. Oh no. My standards of housekeeping are so abysmally low that my eldest daughter was three years old before she even developed a temperature.

If we can visualise this pattern of pursuit as a sort of figure-of-eight macaberesque—executed by two partners moving with the virtuosity of skilled ice-skaters—we may see how the pattern takes shape in a movement of advance and retreat.

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; […]