A couple of news items that made me prick up my ears last week. The first was a report that rugby player Danny Cipriani has been "discharged from hospital after being hit by a bus" [sic]. Now, I do know a bit about first aid and stuff, so am reasonably confident I am correct in pointing out that it is probably better for people who are hit by buses to be admitted to hospital, not discharged. And what was the bus doing in the hospital in the first place.

The second was that the distant relatives of Richard III wanted to be given a say in where his remains were (re)buried. Yeah, because they were so concerned about his grave before. And would distant relatives be the queen and her family?

I went to another tribute band on Friday. This one was a tribute to Messrs Taylor, Deacon, May and Mercury and was very good. Probably the closest I will come to seeing the real thing seeing as a) I am too tight-fisted to pay the ticket price and b) 25% of the band are dead.

That reminds me of the statistic that life expectancy is better if you were not in The Beatles. That's based on the fact that 50% of The Beatles are dead, whereas 50% of the rest of humanity isn't.

Apropos which, we were having a conversation at work on the "where were you when heard that xxx happened". The only event we could all remember our location when hearing the news was the death of the Princess of Wales (I was in bed, but would have trouble giving the year). Ditto 9/11. I know I was working in Basinghole, but would have to think a bit more to work out when it was. That is an example of the two definitions of time. One refers to actual calendar dates; the other refers to the occasion - what you were doing at the time. Other languages have different words for the different meanings For example, French have "heure" for the former and "temps" or "fois" for the latter. Who said this blog isn't educational?

1991 by the way. No not Diana; you fool. Freddie.

Forthcoming annoyance at work is that an Extremely Irritating Person is moving into our office. My line manager has recently had the misfortune of having EIP added to his reports, so we all have the misfortune of having him in our office. He's one of those blokes who just will not stop talking - and it's always about how wonderful he is, or how fantastic his car/computer/phone/other material goods is. You know - if you had a black cat he'd have one that was blacker. His attitude was summed up on Friday when someone told him: "you're just boasting". "No," he replied, "I'm just proving I'm better than you". He claims to be a coffee connoisseur but his coffee of preference is latte with two sugars - so not that much of a connoisseur. It can only be a matter of time before someone loses patience and tells him to shut up.

I was relating the names of the teachers at my first junior school (not just for the fun of it; there was a reason but it isn't important). I remembered that the deputy head was called Mr Mallow, nickname Marsh. Then realised I may have misremembered; it might have been Marsh, nickname Mallow. Actually, both were wrong. It was Marlowe, nickname Marsh Mallow.

A colleagues had an earworm of the 80s song "imagination" but couldn't remember the singer. Nor could any of us, though we all knew the song. It was Belouis Some. I don't think I'd have got that in a month of Sundays.

I found my first geocache yesterday. It's one of my "11 3/4 things to do before you're 50" (to understand that reference, you need to know someone who is younger than 11 3/4 and/or visit a National Trust property or website). It was exciting - for this one we had a small hunt round a local park to solve three clues; each clue gave part of the coordinates for the location of the next clue; all three gave coordinates for the cache. Enormously helped (well, it would have been pretty much impossible without) by my discovery that my sat-nav understands latitude and longitude coordinates.