Is there no end to the erudition of my colleagues? Tonight, over at school, while prowling the corridors during prep, Mr Music-Price strode towards me, with that 'I-bet-I-know-something-you-don't' glint in his eye.

"How many people does it take to make a dialogue?" he enquired.

"Two," I responded, without deviation, hesitation or repetition.

"No!" he exclaimed, wagging a finger of admonishment at me. "It's any number more than two, actually. Two people talking would be a 'dualogue'."

I was, for a moment, impressed. And indeed I would have continued to be, had my friend andcolleague not capped his comment with ".... or so Stephen Fry says." Enough said.

I have a confession to make to you, dear readers. I am, thanks to the counsel of my medical practicioner, attempting to shed the pounds. Or kilos. So if I appear as a mere shadow of my former self when we are next in dualogue, don't be surprised. I mention that only because when, as I strode through the clubhouse to get to the laundry (where the cookies and custard creams were, but under the intense vigilance of you-know-who), a resident, in comfortable repose on the floor, called over to me,

"Sir, could you throw me a banana?"

Indeed I could. And did. There was just the right amount of irony in his acknowledgement, I thought .....

Miss Chloe has now been initiated into the ways of Black Magic - and is totally perplexed. You can imagine the smug grins on the faces of those who know how it happens!

That's enough cyberspatial dialogue for one night.