It's true. Strange things happen while I'm in Scandanavia. So it was rather tempting fate to spend six months exploring every fjord with an almost Slarvadostian type of obsession and (it seemed) visiting every village on the nubbly railways which straddle the spine of Norway. So why was I surpsied when I landed back, totally invigorated by all this fresh air and fresh fish, to find someone

Julio said that he wanted to introduce Six Sigma to the Flying Branch. What he actually meant was that he wanted to bounce up and down on the jump seat in the cockpit and get a closer look at the "co-operative targets", which the plane would be tracking. It's all very well to see a few distant contrails in the far horizon: he wanted to be able to look out of the window and see a fighter or,

"Where the feck is Mount Oliphant?" asked Horace, muttering a little, obviously stressed. We looked up, shocked to the core at Horace's (very unusual) attempt at swearing and even more unusual evidence that he did, after all, pay attention to the "Father Ted" TV episodes which Dietrich and I found so funny and which Horace would normally feign to ignore. It was Julio, naturally, who recovered