Tonight I had the rare opportunity to experience what might, given the right circumstances, be a startling excuse for being late to work. Not quite in the class of the young man my mother knew in one of her first jobs, in the days of dragon ladies drawing a line across the book at the right time, below which one had to provide a written excuse. He would demonstrate his creativity with remarks like "Cow on the line" or "Fog in the Channel"; later he became a quite well-known artist. For me, it could be "Boat in the way", since I cross Tower Bridge and the entrance to Limehouse Basin. Once upon a time, docklands was full of such potential traffic jams, with ships passing through all the time; but tonight it was a great surprise to find a queue building up in Limehouse.

So far, so exotic, had it not been for the fact that tonight was one of the most blustery and showery for some time. March is certainly coming in like a lion, but I wasn't dressed for it: definitely a two-teacake evening. It might even be a night for listening to the Shipping Forecast with a mug of cocoa: tonight's looks rather alarming - so perhaps this edition instead: