The other day I was driving down Histon Road, and saw something lying in the middle of the road which looked from a distance as if it might plausibly have been a largish dead animal. Fair enough, I thought, that's not entirely surprising on a main road. Poor little creature; I wonder what it was. Except that as I got nearer it began to look like an odder and odder kind of animal, until eventually I was close enough to see that in fact it was a cushion, with a generic-animal-skin-brown cover, abandoned in the middle of the road and folded over in a way that arranged that from my viewing angle all the tassles were hidden at the back. It's rather strange to have already felt pity for a poor defenceless beast in a world full of scary fast-moving wheeled boxes, and only then to discover that the object of your pity is a cushion.

Also, yesterday I felt a worrying bump as I was reversing into a parking space. When I got out and looked, I found about two thirds of a pair of sunglasses, which had been lying on the ground and which I'd run over.

So I'm declaring this the Week of Strange Roadkill, and of normally inanimate objects contriving to get themselves into the road and be run over. I fully expect that tomorrow there will be an accident on the A14 due to a stray armchair trying to scuttle across the road and causing a lorry to swerve.