And the Word was made flesh (and charming with it)…

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Wasn’t there a cartoon to that effect? (Oh yes. There it is.)

Same with internet dating. That six foot blond Viking type you met online may have been literally telling the truth. You only get to see that he’s also six feet wide when you meet face to face. Which is when you also notice that he smells like a Viking who hasn’t washed since they used to rule England. (True, happened to a mate of mate.)

Speaking of smelly Vikings – did you know they used week-old horse wee to kill bugs in their hair? Couldn’t afford combs. It was the amonia in the aged equine urine that turned their hair blonde. Does that make you feel differently about ABBA?

But the main point is this – how can you be sure that anything or anyone on the net is who they say they are?

Or if they even exist at all?

Well, I can now officially confirm that Padmum does exist.

Remember I asked if anyone wanted to come to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy with me. Padmum – or Padmini as I now call her – immediately put her hand up.

And she came. All the way from Chennai in India. Chennai! In India! With her daughter Nitila. That’s them in the picture. In the flesh

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Just finish the damn book… OK, OK, I’ve written it.

Finnish. (Bear with me, my proofreading is slow.)

Blackwatertown the book and Blackwatertown the blog have both come good this week.

A while ago Kerry View told me to hurry up and “finish the damn book. I promised to get it!”

Just the other day  Tony Schaab asked, “Is your novel completely written?”

The answer is –

These are what you were looking for

I’m thinking of getting one of these gadgets. Any advice or lessons learned from people out there?

RIP Robert Degen: You put your left leg in… The man who wrote the Hokey Pokey is dead. (Or should that be the Hokey Cokey?)

Here’s a very capable communicator with a wealth of life experience who is looking for a job. He has an interesting blog too.

Think before you make a placard

And lots of fascinating stuff from the Uni Sociology Club at the University of Northern Iowa.

Like the top tip for making a placard: Think first.

A stun gun shaped like tampons – in case you’d be embarrassed to be discovered with a weapon in your handbag.   And how to make your eyes look bigger with LED eyelashes.

"Some squirrel nibbled the continent of South America on one of my pumpkins," reported Seth Masket. "It's freaking me out."

Finally, Strange Maps is the place to discover stains, bite marks, rust and clouds in the shape of countries, states and continents. It’s called Accidental Geography. Or more poshly –  cartocacoethes – which means the uncontrollable urge to see maps in everyday, non-cartography-related objects. However, Cacoethes is a Greek word used to express uncontrollable urge or desire, especially for something harmful. Strange Maps thinks seeing maps everywhere is harmless, if not downright beneficial. It prefers the friendlier term, cartococcygia, for the condition. Cartococcygia literally means maps built by cuckoos – analogous to nephelococcygia (a term for seeing shapes in clouds, from The Birds by Aristophanes , literally: clouds built by cuckoos).