Bears eat honey, the rich consume Venice and bugs devour me

Peak bear performance was attained today, at Wildwood Devon near Ottery St Mary (also peak British place name performance, but that need not detain us here).

- Lucy Mangan

Monday

Two five-year-old European brown bears, Mish and Lucy (no relation), escaped from their enclosure at the park and headed straight for its cafe's food stores, where they happily ploughed their way through a week's worth of honey before being gently lured back home with a bell and some other snacks, whereupon Mish promptly fell asleep.

It's perfect. The Teddy Bears' Picnic (what a big surprise in the woods it must have been, especially to whoever was responsible for securing the enclosure), Winnie the Pooh, a suggestion of Paddington in the eminent reasonableness of it all, plus European brown bears being far the cutest and most childhood-teddy-like of all.

This is the good news story we need. Enjoy it. The year is shaping up... badly.

Tuesday Mish and Lucy were originally rescued from an Albanian snow drift. I am on my way to Devon to ask them for directions back there. Summer, the vilest of all seasons is properly here.

Once again I appear to have neglected to get my air-conditioned bunker built in time and so I am stuck on this boiling isle, whose architecture, culture, and working and retail hours are designed to cope only with temperatures of "brisk" and below.

I was born in a cardigan. That is how I need to live. Not least because when I am forced to expose skin to sun it not only burns but makes me an instant smorgasbord of delights for any and every passing bug. I say passing - I'm pretty sure some of them fly in specially, a date on their little bug calendars saying "Mangan meat feast begins". Bastards. Venomous little bastards.