I’ve been on holiday again. Completely absent from what is usually my reality. And I didn’t even have to leave the city. It seems funny that you can vanish so completely from a place that normally seems so small, where everybody knows everybody and a day doesn’t go by that you don’t bump into an acquaintance or friend unexpectedly – typically when you are looking exceptionally rough and are in a hurry and probably in some sort of pain which makes your salutary smile look twisted and morbid hence deepening the sense of social paranoia that we all seem to suffer from.

From the Logical Wisdom of Isabel

You had a scotch egg, I saw the wrapper, and Robbie wouldn’t eat a scotch egg, because he just wouldn’t do a thing like that. A girl came in and was very upset that we had sweet potatoes from Israel. And pomegranates. No they’re not, they’re amazing, they’re not stupid in Greece, they’re really nice. What if they’re not from occupied territory? Well you can’t, you can’t know. It's big, economy, maybe, but not the small people. Sweet potato farmers have to live, even if it is a country which is bad. It just says Israel, but I made a formal complaint about it.

This girl has come in – this soap, but it is an Israeli product – she’s complained about lots of things. She freaked about that as well, the soap; why does she have to be such a hypocrite; she ignores all the other bad things that happen in the world. It’s not my fault, give it a rest lady. The last time the shop tried to avoid all the Israeli products, other customers complained. I got confused, first I thought ‘this is wrong’, but I dunno. These pies aren’t really enough. Nor do I. Can't we just get drunk?

Ferret Comment: What a weirdo, what’s he doing?

For the past two months I have been slowly gathering the materials with which to hunt the vicious Signal crayfish, grey squirrel of our waterways, a scourge of riverbanks, fish stocks and native species of crayfish. To do this I have followed the instructions of George Monbiot, and last week I put the finishing touches to my free ticket to a meal.