We apologize for the interruption to your service...

Have been failing to keep the blogmonster fed over the last few days because my wife's been in hospital with appendicitis. People (mostly who've never been there) keep telling us how lucky we are to have St Mary's hospital, Paddington, so nearby. All I can say that if this is how a well-run NHS hospital operates, I'm very glad we're moving to America.

Your trivia fact for today is that St Mary's is the hospital where Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin (in the building pictured). My daughter was born in a room in the same building, on the second floor (third if you're from the US), just to the left of the entrance portico. By the state of things, we expected Sir Alexander to walk into the room at any time.