This Is Getting Silly

It appears that what I consider an annoying Monday afternoon, a frustrating hour that can be forgotten after a good sherry, is now international news. French, Germans, Czechs and Turks, have thrown away their wines, steins, dumplings and delight, and are now concerned only with der Buchautor Mark Forsyth and his whinges.

For the record (if there is such a thing), I do not believe that the British Library is involved in a vast conspiracy to cover up goings on at the top of the Danish government. I simply thought that it was as amusing as it was annoying. It certainly shows the silliness of web-filtering, but, to be honest, I was more motivated by the constant failures of the British Library wifi, which have been driving all who work there to distraction for a couple of years, and of which this seemed a particularly preposterous example.

So I shall do nothing more etymological today than to mention that, according to the OED, the silly season was first recorded in 1861. And then I shall run away to my secret island hideaway. There I shall live a life of anonymity, and, I suspect, isolation from the Internet. I shall return to blogging on around the 24th.