Sometimes it's not even my own smoke

Yesterday's clothes are heavy with the smell of smoke. For verily, I am a man; I cannot resist a barbecue. Invite me to a party, show me a grill in the garden, I will take it over.

In the rain, for I am an Englishman.

In the morning, I wasn't even sure that I was going. Too much to do, and the party was the wrong side of the river, a walk and then a busride; but I've known Matty since he was a bump, and this was his eighteenth, and I haven't seen his mum in months. So I was trying to get some work done in the morning, and remembered that I had no bread because I've been away, and didn't have time to bake; so I thought I'd just run up the road to The Best Asian Supermarket In The Country(tm) and buy a couple of samosas for lunch.

Halfway up the road, I remembered that I could make samosas.

And then I remembered that I was going to a party. Full of ravening teenagers.

And then I remembered that I had this heart-shaped pastry mould...

So I bought a pound of lamb mince and spent an hour in the kitchen and took a dozen heart-shaped samosas to the party. I should have taken a picture, before the horde descended; they were very pretty.

And then I ended up running the barbecue. In the rain.

But between these two events, I was talking to a boy who'd been to a lecture on the psychology of language, and he said that English speakers - native speakers or otherwise - are more prone to being fooled by optical illusion than people of other tongues. I love that thought, that your language actually literally affects the way you see the world.