The wolf spider _Lycosa tarantula_ is named after Taranto, Italy, and so, indirectly, are both the tarantella and those giant New World spiders. As a kid, this always bothered me: “There are no tarantulas in Europe!” Finally, it’s sorted. Yes, I was an odd child.

Rhythmic construction drill outside sounds just like the dramatic BRWAANG BRWAANG chords in Inception. How do I wake up?

Knitting jargon: SABLE (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy) means owning more yarn than you could knit in your life. Unless my book-buying habits change radically, I may have reached BABLE.

If the Anglicans had only figured out a way to play rugby in the Cathedral it would have been rebuilt by now.

I am now an Aucklander. Yet I still distinctly remember the rest of New Zealand. Must take a while to kick in.

I would be much more likely to watch Game Of Thrones if they reshot it with a cast of guinea pigs.

Hope you’ve all taken your anti-nausea pills, because Prezi is in da house!

The nose on that kid’s SpongeBob backpack is so three-dimensional it would have scandalised the Victorians.

The further into the gallery show we go, the less crowded it gets. As if the visitors were being quietly eaten by the art.

If called up on stage by a mime and invited to have a lightsaber duel with retractable tape measures I think I would acquit myself well.

Pointy shoes; stripy trousers; flowery shirt, cuff links, untucked; sunnies on spiky gelled head. Kiwi manhood on parade.

What shocked Flaubert about De Sade was that, in all of _Justine_, “there isn’t a single tree, or a single animal.”

@adzebill