Dat's a funny looking pigeon

Pigeon pigeon pigeon DUCK.
I could understand seeing a random duck in one of the parks, but there's no ponds within miles of Russell Square. Still, I expect it knew best. Maybe it had run away to join the flock. ("You just don't understand me! I hate swimming! I wish I'd never been hatched!")

Russell Square's had a makeover since I was last there. It's nice, with beds of wildflowers.

We were in Bloomsbury to see a recording of Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive at the Drill Hall (it'll be on Radio 4 tonight. Jack Dee was one of the guests.) ( Fun! )

Must look at the Beeb's website and see what other radio shows are recording soon.

At the end they got us to record a few sound-effects for Iannucci's new TV show which should be on next month (yay!) That makes the second time I've been a member of a choir singing a comic hymn. Odd. (The first was for "Humma's Hymn" in the Hitchhiker's Guide film. I'm not onscreen in the making-of documentary- yes, of course I looked...)

Quick books post

Culinary Pleasures is a bad book. Not in the sense of being a bad book, you understand. Oh no. In the sense of tempting me to start collecting old cookery books again, which I have neither money nor space to do. It's fascinating.

Architects of Emortality (Stableford) is a bit irritating- I don't think there are actually any "as you know, Bob" conversations, but it feels like there are- in fact it feels quite old-fashioned clunky infodump-full in style, but with snazzy new millennial biology and environmental stuff (it's from 1999) so sets up a bit of cognitive dissonance. Not bad, but I'm glad I borrowed rather than buying.