THIS writer has had a lot of time for mental doodling the past three nights, while the wife caught up on every Michael Jackson music video, with supplementary flashes of the Jackson Five.

DO you have this mental quirk of a chord, a chorus, suddenly popping into your consciousness and refusing to leave the rest of the day ... or two? I do.

THROUGHOUT history, politicians have had a use for theatre - the exception being US President Abraham Lincoln.

A deluded perfectionist like Plato may have wanted disruptive, always questioning and challenging, never  satisfied artists exiled from The Republic, but politicians know the benefits that can come from an enthralling show.

FORTY years ago (as of tomorrow), after the mid-morning interval, Mrs Yap, my class English teacher walked in and said school was out, we were to go home. Yippee!

Wait a minute. Nobody wants to look a gift horse in the mouth, but free of mental shackles mid-morning of a school-day, what’s the catch?

IT must be the weather – scalding heat through the day, humid stillness through the sticky sweaty night, interrupted for a day or two by rain slamming down – that accounts for the by-election fever, five bouts in the past 10 months that is sapping the energy of the ruling body (a body of many parts.)

In response to the latest outbreak of the disease in Penanti, the newly promoted Chief Medical Officer Dr N has turned conventional medical wisdom on its head, by suggesting