... Are Brilliant Mark XII

How bloody clever

This one occurred to me as I crossed between car park and theatre in Stratford a couple of weeks ago. Locks - as in the confined sections of rivers or canals where the level can be changed for raising or lowering boats between adjacent sections. Bloody clever.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

This next one may seem unlikely for chap who so prizes words but there's a man-made scheme I've always thought utterly brilliant and which is all about telling tales with numbers: double entry book-keeping. The first time it was shown to me (ironically as part of the old, and I have to say lamented, Solicitors' Final Examination Course) it just struck me that this was, as Keats might have put it, a thing of beauty.

Wise guy

Martin Scorsese. I have just listened to an old Film Programme podcast of his interview with the estimable Francine Stock and it sent me scurrying to my notebook with a note to revisit The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp because any recommendation Scorsese makes must be worth following.