Our lot

A woman has just walked past carrying two shiny, helium-filled balloons depicting the number 99. At first I thought they may have said 66, but then I saw they were tagged from the bottom, so not upside down. That's a big birthday.

I had 66 in my head because I have just sent a photo to a client which the camera labelled as 1666 - a portentous date for any English person. The plague had been tearing through London up until then, but someone accidentally set fire to the capital and sanitised the whole place for the foreseeable future - well, foreseeable by them anyway.

They pulled a lot of buildings down to try and contain the fire, many of them churches. An ancient, sealed lead coffin was discovered in one, and some curious and enterprising quack drilled a hole in the side of it to find that it was half full of a dark liquid which was all that remained of the flesh of its occupant. 

He drained it off into small glasses and people queued up to buy it to drink as a tonic which also warded off the effects of the Great Fire - or the plague, I forget which. 

I heard the other day that at the beginning of the pandemic, a modern trickster was selling anti-viral software for computers which immunised your PC against Covid 19. 400 years later it still goes on and old superstitions persist. 

I have often said that if I were to be born into a time of my own choosing, it would be sometime in the last half of the 17th century. Actually, no matter when you are born, things don't change much and the grass is never greener on the other side.

I have been having many odd dreams recently. The night before last I was in a vaguely familiar indoor space which was painted all white from floor to ceiling. I think it was a pub.

A drowned man walked in, dripping with water and leaving wet, muddy footprints over the clean floor. His neck was caked in mud which was oozing up from under his shirt collar. He came over and stared at me for a moment before saying, "I think you are ill with something, aren't you?"

He may have been right, but I woke up before I could respond.