I was waiting to be joined for dinner and we had more choice in modernity. So I waited.

A week later I struggled to make my way through the town. It was filled with people. I had had no inkling - whatever had brought them together had escaped my notice. The cause became clear - the Christmas lights were being turned on, and a funfair filled the ancient thoroughfare. As I managed to push my way through to the wall of the churchyard and find space to telephone, I heard shouting - "There he is!" and the low-pitch/high pitch bisyllabic roar of "BRU-NO, BRU-NO". In the back of an open top limousine the boxer Frank Bruno was making his first public appearance since his time in hospital. I could just see him through the heads before me. (Though I once stood next to him in the queue in the Central TV canteen - "How you doing?" he asked, and then looked surprised when the canteen lady served me before him. He hadn't realised that she would want to get him a good piece of fish, and not the last broken bit left in her tray. I was having the lasagne and she wasn't waiting for more of that).

Later, though, when we had emerged from the restaurant (a weekly meal out is part of the rent I am paying) we saw another exotic sight - reindeer. Four of them, quietly munching straw inside a temporary ring of crush barriers.

And just down the line I have discovered, via one of this week's disasters, my morning train stops at the home of Ozzy Osbourne (the one time bat eater!). "Seer Green and Jordans" the announcer tells us. In a footnote to this week's news I have read that Ozzy's Buckinghamshire estate is in Seer Green. Perhaps the bats have been fighting back. Otherwise I'll have to discover what Ozzy has been eating.