Random Roundup

[sawyl]

From the Department of Five Random Things Make a Post:

1. The arrival of a big box of book swag, in the form of Corambis and The Mirador, the last two books in Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. Sadly my second hand copy of The Virtú has yet to arrive having had farther to travel, so I'm going to have to dip into something else until it arrives.
2. Saw what may have been a swift while out for my evening run. I'd initially marked it down as a swallow until I noticed the size and speed of the thing, it's swept back wings and lack of a long forked tail. After doing some research, I've discovered that we're at the very start of swifts' migration window, so it's just possible the bird I saw was an early arrival.
3. Didn't much enjoy The Man Who Knows on R4 Extra. The thing seemed rather flat and the attempt to satirise the phone hacking scandal seemed rather heavy handed and clumsy. But that didn't stop me listing to the whole thing on iPlayer — I had to have something on while I did my domestic chores so I stuck with it hoping it was finally going to take flight, even though in the end I found that it really didn't.
4. In a sad reminder that everything has an LD₅₀, the strange news that woman in New Zealand has died from hypokalemia from a combination of poor nutrition and 8-10 litres of coca-cola a day.
5. There is no point five: this point has been left intentionally blank.