I'm currently waiting for a friend to make his way out of Town to the boondocks of the tube system, from where we will embark on a voyage of historical discovery. We're going up the M40 to go and look at the paintings in a stately home. I have to choose the CDs for the trip, and he's going to choose the destination. We'll probably argue a bit.

I learned why the Knights say "Ni!". Néa must know this already. "Ni" is the Swedish for "you" in the plural, and used to also be the formal singular "you", like the French "vous". However, Swedish added a strange twist to this. If someone was eligible to be addressed as "ni" then, by definition, it was inappropriate to do so. Instead, one referred to them by their title, e.g. "would the professor like another cup of tea?" As the writer concludes, "the world really is coming to a sorry state when people are going about saying "ni" to old ladies."
       I suspected the story of being a wind-up, but I happened to have a copy of "Teach Yourself Swedish" dating from 1969, and it agrees. It also said that the awkwardness of having to address people in the third person, while also avoiding the words "he" and "she" (taboo in this situation), had led to efforts to persuade the Swedish public to use "ni" more widely, with some success. However, the success must have been limited, as I understand that the formal "ni" is now all but extinct.
       It is not know if the Knights who say "Ni!" are a deliberate reference to this quirk of Swedish grammar.

This weekend, which is mostly gone now here? Watched a Hindi film, bought some plants and crushed my right index finger in a car door.

"In Soviet Union, Saturday is START of weekend."

Ha! Despite the fact that I don't follow the trends in e.g. http://www.redtide.co.uk/celebdaq/index.html?s=09000901 I have been making a good living buying Madonna, which seems to be a profitable move.