There is a secret place that cutlery goes and hides in, probably laughing it’s little tynes off as you hunt high and low for it.

You know what it’s like. You grow up, you get the mortgage, kids, car, insurance policies, you do a bit of gardening and then one day you go and buy a nice, fairly expensive set of cutlery which is going to last you the rest of your life and get handed down to your kids. And you lovingly place the cutlery in the cutlery drawer - which might be the first mistake.

Because a year later, when the family are sitting around the table and you need six dinner forks, you suddenly discover that there are only five. And no, the errant fork hasn’t slipped down the back of the drawer. It isn’t in the dishwasher. Your teenage son didn’t take it up to his bedroom with his Pot Noodles because your son isn’t a teenager any more and besides, he doesn’t live at home either. So you spend the rest of the day ripping out the kitchen cabinets trying to track it down until, exhausted by the search you concede that it just ain’t there. And you just know it in your bones that a year or so from now the dinner fork count is going to be four.

So I have concluded that there is a secret place that cutlery goes to hide, rest up, nurse it’s tynes back to good health and have a good laugh at your expense. The problem, of course, is that like everyone else, I just don’t know where it is because it’s a secret that only cutlery knows about.

Like everyone I am, in great part, a product of my time and in my case that’s late 1950’s innocence and austerity through the 60’s loosening of mores, morals, trouser bottoms and regular visits to the barbers. Whilst much of the 1960’s still resonates the 50’s do not really get a look in and pre-50’s is consigned to the history books.

My young world was filled by The Eagle and Boys’ Own. It was all Dan Dare and Roy of the Rovers. The bookshelf was filled with Just William and Jennings and yes - I’ll admit it - Biggles. Laugh all you want, I was an avid fan of Biggles and his adventures with Ginger and Algy and there were, of course, a huge number of books to read. He may not have been a literary genius but Captain W.E. Johns was nothing short of prolific. He made Barbara Cartland look like an amateur by comparison and rumour had it she could knock off one of her titles in an afternoon!

Rolling forward to 2007, Biggles is really the sort, along with characters like Billy Bunter, that I never expected to hear from again. If nothing else, the stories will break every politically correct rule ever conceived. They are filled with racial stereotypes, the class system, the old establishment and a complete lexicon of stiff upper English expressions which died with the wholesale importing of trashy American television.

But I was wrong. Browsing through my local Waterstones yesterday there it was. A Biggles anthology of four of five books in one big tome. Pride of place it had on one of the tables. So… I say old boy, Biggles flies again!

Washington’s Corcoran Gallery and College of Art is a quite spectacular building as are, of course, most of the buildings in the US capital city.

I had the great pleasure of visiting the gallery today for an exhibition of one of my favourite American artists - photographer Ansel Adams.

Whilst at the gallery I sought out the Men’s Room where I encountered the most amazing urinals I have ever seen and simply had to get a quick photo of them on my mobile phone camera. This is, of course, the sort of thing you don’t really want to get caught doing so it was a very quick shot. The room was also a little on the dark side hence the picture looks a little gloomy.

But are they not magnificent?

The ‘smoking’ area of the Hotel Washington is just outside the back door standing out on the junction of F Street with 15th. The first time I went out there I had a bit of a shock as I found myself face to face with this big guy in dark glasses, dark suit and a wire creeping out of his collar that ended in his ear. The road was closed off and his job was to make sure nobody tried to open it again.

Glancing down F street I could see a large contingent of very black vehicles and more earnest young men, one with a dog, and a large tent covering the back entrance of the Willard Hotel next door.

Now these guys don’t talk to you so there is no point in trying to start a conversation. They know they look mean and they know the power they have over just about anyone else who doesn’t have the suit, the glasses and the earpiece. But hotel staff talk. And word on the street is that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is holed up in the Willard for the week.

Everyone around here believes it and is repeating this as fact. The earnest young men, their dog and big black vehicles are still out there staring everyone down but nobody seems to have told then that Ahmadinejad has flown the coop. According to the BBC website he delivered a speech today in Tehran.

Which begs the question: Just who IS holed up in the Willard for the week? Or - can the president of Iran be in two places at the same time?

With the possibility of those who earn their living in the industry it surely must be true that everyone loathes and despises insurance companies. They squeeze the maximum amount of money they can for the policy in the first place and then squirm and try and wriggle their way into paying out the smallest amount they can get away with when you put in a claim. And nobody - well there are probably quite a few anal people who do I suppose - ever reads all the small print. It’s more often than not written in a form of the language especially reserved for, well, small print!

But here’s something I don’t understand that landed on the doormat in this mornings mail.

The picture here is a photo of my dog, Rene, a greyhound. She was a five year old ex-racer when we adopted her just over four years ago. With the exception of a voluntary donation to the Retired Greyhound Trust, she cost me nothing. She has, in her time with us, never had any serious health problem and any visits to the vet have been for yearly shots or simply precautionary. So the vet bills have been, luckily, extremely light. And she is, at least as I write this, in absolute perfect health.

So how come she costs more to insure than my sons two bedroom house in Sheffield? I’m not kidding. I know this because I pay for both. The insurance of one perfectly healthy middle-aged dog is costing me more than the building insurance on a house.

Makes me glad I don’t have a tortoise. I’d probably need a special bank loan to insure that.

I had a good chuckle this morning when I read the following short and sweet piece at Irregular Times and I quote it verbatim and in full:

For those baby boomers who might consider decrying the current sorry state of lyricism in today’s pop music, I have only this to say:

Hey there, Lamppost, whatcha knowin?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growin!
Ain’tcha got no rhymes for me?
Doo-n-doo doo, feelin’ Groovy

Yes. You got me. Enough said!