July 2007

July 2, Strip 222.
Le Tour de France.
Le Tour visited the UK for the first time in twelve years this Summer, and it even stopped raining for the two days it was over here. The route snaked through Kent and passed within 100 yards of my front door in Tunbridge Wells. Disgusted by the inconvenience, we moved to Hastings the following day.
I love the Tour de France – it’s one of the few sporting events I will sit down and watch. It’s not just a sport, it’s a travelogue and a soap opera as well. What a pity the storyline this year was about doping yet again. By the time the Tour ended, three weeks later, so many people had been disqualified for illegal drugs that no-one cared who had won, including me. The following days strip turned out to be frighteningly prescient.

July 23, Strip 229.
Dobby.
Who knew that the death of a character you previously thought was an irritating waste of time would be the most affecting thing in the book? Blub!

July 25, Strip 230.
We’re not making this up.
One and a quarter million copies of ‘Deathly Hallows’ were sold on the Saturday of its re-lease in Britain alone. That’s one copy for every 50 people in the country. And somehow the bookselling trade conspired to discount the books so much that they made a loss on every copy they sold. Supermarkets sold them as loss leaders and small booksellers had to do the same to compete. Madness.

July 30, Strip 232.
The summer that never happened.
It rained. Endlessly. It rained so much that some water authorities even rescinded their drought orders. More importantly, a lot of towns all over the country found themselves under water.
This is also a sort of backwards tribute to the South Plains Mall in Lubbock, Texas, which has a car park with a tendency to become a swimming pool at the slightest hint of rain. If you’re in that part of the world, never park behind Dillards if there’s a single cloud in the sky.