Things bloosom in their time. They bud and bloom, blossom and fade. Everything in its time.

For some, it was easier to take the leap from the leafless tree and dance on nothing until dancing was done.

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

It stared at them, and it paused for a hundred years, which transpired in a dozen heart beats.

There was Virginia Boote, the food and restaurant critic, who had once been a great beauty but was now a grand and magnificent ruin, and who delighted in her ruination.

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

Dreams are hopes, and echoes of hope.