Swinging on the Riviera one day

The Perils Of Pauline Episode Nine, ``The Mummy Walks'', opens with the discovery that Warde and Pauline are not dead.

( Pauline and her party suffer the most humiliating experience possible: travelling coach. For *five* days.  )

Trivia: Japan's urban population rose from 38 percent of the nation in 1950 to 75 percent by 1975. Source: A Modern History of Japan, Andrew Gordon.

Currently Reading: Coronation Commentary, Geoffrey Dennis. OK, so, like, the English monarch is awesome because of stuff like the Queen-Empress's 1877 declaration that all Indians should have equal rights under the law, which you'd never see, say, an American President do for blacks in the South. Relentless praise like this is the stuff that makes republicans of people. Also there's wonderful footnotes and a hilarious last two chapters that amount to big ``whoops'' moments regarding the abdication, which Dennis spends dozens of pages explaining was not a Constitutional Crisis because everything was done without Parliament having to do much of anything and besides we have yet to figure out who it was exactly did the devious deeds depriving the people of their beloved Edward VIII, Eddie himself being apparently off the hook. I do like his suggestion that were the English to ever go Communist they'd probably keep the Monarchy around because they do that sort of thing; ``His Majesty's Soviet'' has got a weirdly credible ring to it. Also he has got a lovely like about how Victoria was the beloved mother of empires; George V the father of nations; Edward VII everyone's fun-loving uncle; Edward VIII, their lover. Well.