Things you only know if you're not at work  I know that people
in offices read newspapers, but I don't think you really take
them in - you are, after all, avoiding work. Trying to
concentrate while avoiding doing something is like trying to get
drunk while you're sitting in the dark, pretending not to be in
(you may have to trust me that it's very, very hard).  Me,
however, I am just avoiding my own puritan work ethic, which is
pathetically sluggish and easy to outwit. I can not only read
things, but remember them afterwards. And I can listen to Melvin
Bragg.  Now I know everything: the manufacturer of the comic
that turns Lady Di into a flesh-eating reptile; the extent of
the East India Company's private army; that pigeons landing on a
freshly laid surface destroy the bonding and accelerate
perishing; that, even though 'Berliner' does mean jelly
doughnut, Berliners (the people, not the doughnuts) did not, in
fact, laugh when Kennedy said he was one, any more than New
Yorkers would laugh if Woody Allen said h