The great snail has smiled upon me!

bugshaw just sent me a good-luck virtual snail.

By a circuitous train of thought, probably routed via Reading and Crewe, this reminded me of my book of Chinese words, which featured a comic snail (wo1 niu2) and which I'd lost eighteen months ago.

Which made me go to Amazon and order another copy of the book.

At which point, due to the ineffable perversity of life, I looked in the corner of the study under the bag of shirts with missing buttons on top of the box of unknown contents next to the uncomfortable futon which I rarely used, and there was a Hobbs Sports plastic bag containing my Chinese textbooks.

Thankfully Amazon allows one to cancel orders.