Ten Things I've learnt This Summer:

It's been a long summer, and while a little of what's happened has involved me learning things which are, comparatively, Serious Business, I felt that this little list would sum up what the summer's really been like.

1. If I go somewhere else, and leave my tent with my friends, and get back to find my tent has mysteriously rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, my friends didn't move it: tents just get up and move like that, honestly.
2. You only need a cape, a paper crown, and a toy sword to become a convincing King. Even passers by will be impressed and reverent in the face of your majesty.
3. The reason Batman is so lonely and violent is because no one will hug Batman. The reason no one will hug Batman is because Batman wears a cape. Hugging capes is awkward: do your put your hands outside the cape, and thus have a much wider radius for your arms to cover due to dramatic billowyness, or put your arms under the cave and invade Batman's personal space? Superheroes are hard to hug.
4. Speaking of which, a man dressed as Batman preaching about God is hard to take seriously.
5. Celery is a difficult fashion accessory to manage, and not many people can pull it off: a decorative vegetable isn't for everyone. Don't wear celery.
6. Any story, if dramatic enough, can be adapted to the form of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air opening theme song.
7. I can imagine no bad day that cannot be improved by three or four people coming together to play "Yellow Submarine" on their instrument of choice.
8. Sandwich making among teenage males is somewhere between an art form and a competitive sport: making an incredibly tall sandwich with a ridiculous variety of flavours then crushing it down as far as it can go is an immensely manly pursuit.
9. There is always one person in a card game who takes it ridiculously seriously, one person who is astonishingly good, and one person who always loses. I will always be the last of those people.
10. People seem remarkably happy to lend me a cuddly lion at short notice.

Bonus eleventh thing: my good friend Mozzy, who I met in the far off lands of The Internet, has started a wonderful blog that is one man's story of his trials and tribulations in the Zombie Apocalypse. Regular readers may see why this appeals to me. I'm on hand as a sort of editor/zombie/story consultant, while not actually writing posts for it.

Anyway, go check it out here. It's pretty cool.