is shared by families, students, and a variety of people of varying prosperity. As is common in some areas residents who want to dispose of sound but unwanted goods may put them in the front garden, perhaps with a note saying 'help yourself'. Last month one of her neighbours put out a serviceable fridge that had no place in her new kitchen. It lingered sad and unwanted for about a week until the neighbour's husband had the brainwave of putting a notice on it saying "For Sale - £25".It was gone in two hours.

Monday, November 15, 2010

I can't add much useful comment to the torrent of opinion on the web and in the papers about the Twitter 'bomb threat' that sounded like nothing of the sort, and thecommemorate 650 years of the magistracy.

With tickets at forty quid a pop, not including travel costs up to the big smoke, I shall not be one of the expected 950 JPs joining in the fun.

Today's headlines about yesterday's demonstration that got out of hand induced a few minutes' nostalgia here at Bystander Towers. I was at university in 1968 when radical students were mostly Marxists or Trotskyists, and the big issue was the Vietnam war. Across the Channel the 'Évenements' of student and worker protest caused a few lively nights in Paris, and the workers at Renault welded the gates of their usine shut. President DeGaulle took the precaution of squaring the generals before deciding how to handle matters. A few coachloads of students went from my university