Trapeze A Jolly Good Fellow

Lumme, free at last! What an ordeal, being held hostage like that.

Still, it's good to know that my fellow Thanetians rallied round and got the money together to pay off the Uranians. If you let me know who you were, I'll pop a cheque in the post.

It's made me think seriously about security here at the old CTM, so I've decided to get a panic room built. Looking around for an architect, I took a squiz at those David Chipperfield people. You know, the ones who are putting up a circus tent for the new Anthea Turner Centre over in the Arsonists' Playground.

They seem to do heaps of very posh houses. And offices. And hotels. And retail, for that matter.

Not so much on the civic side, though. Most of the civic projects they list seem to be at the model stage. Apart from the Marbach Literature Museum in Germany, which they proudly trumpet will be opening on 9 May 2005, the 200th anniversary of Friedrich Schiller's death. Somehow Herr Schiller's deathday must have changed, as the museum in fact opened on 6 June 2006.

Oh well, at least they seem to be keen on chinwagging. As they say in the 'Philosophy' section of their website: "We believe that high quality design results from the continuity of the design process and intensive dialogue with the client, consultants, contractors and end users."

I suppose that's what they meant when they told The Gazunder that the man himself might nip down the M2 one day and give us end users a bit of a talk.