I've managed to lose two umbrellas in the past two weeks. The nice one appears to be lost for good, but fortunately I recovered the cheap backup umbrella this morning so at least I have some rain protection until I buy a new nice one this weekend.

(That'll be my third really nice umbrella this year. The first one underwent catastrophic twangy failure in May, and the second disappeared last week in mysterious circumstances. Perhaps this time I should see if the shop assistant can find me one without the curse.)

I slept very badly the night before last, so I was extremely sleepy yesterday evening and was careful to get a very early night. I slept like a log from 10:30 until about 4am, at which point I snapped wide awake and only managed to doze off again at 7, leaving me just enough time to become sleepy enough to resent my alarm. Whenever I have middle-of-the-night insomnia, this always seems to happen: I finally doze off again just at the moment I need to be getting back up. I suspect my body clock of doing it deliberately.

I'm clearly not all that sleepy now, though, because on the way to work this morning I spotted the number of a bus, remembered what its route was, and hence deduced that it was going to turn left (and therefore it was safe for me to pull out in front of it) some time before it bothered to indicate. That struck me as quite cunning and useful, although I probably couldn't have done it if I hadn't had the bus routes fresh in my mind from last week.