Sorry about the less frequent posts. It was a busy weekend, and right in the middle of it City lost 6-0 at Ipswich, which dread tidings drained me of my creative impulse for about a day. Also, it's quite cold and my brain is sluggish. This always happens. I write my best stuff from June to October, then I go into something of a slump.

Today, though, isn't the kind of day that should pass unmarked. Firstly it's St Brice's Day, an important milestone in the history of ethnic cleansing. On this day in 1002, Ethelred issued a decree commanding that all Danes in England should be murdered, and Saxon death squads traversed the length and breadth of the land putting villages to the sword.

I might as well take the opportunity to correct two enduring myths about English history. Firstly, even before 1066, things still used to happen. Secondly, whilst Ethelred was known as Ethelred the Unready, it doesn't mean he was unprepared. The name derives from the Old English word rede, meaning counsel or advice, so Unready just means unadvised, or badly advised. Aethelred, the correct spelling of his name, means noble counsel, so the nickname is by way of a pun.

The bad advice thing definitely applies to the massacre, which was supposed to solve the Danish problem for ever but only served to trigger new hostilities. When Ethelred died in 1016 (on April 23, which incidentally isn't Shakespeare's birthday, but I'll do all that then), the Danes took over again in the person of King Canute.

Today isn't just St Brice's Day though. It's also the square root of winter.

Now you may think winter begins the first day you have to put the fire on in the daytime and ends when Man United get knocked out of the Champions League, but you're just slack. In my world winter is considered to start on November 1st and last until March 31st, which makes it 152 days long.  Thus, twelve and a bit days into November, at the precise time indicated for this post, is the square root of winter. I meant to tell you in advance, because it's not like anyone else is going to make the effort to track this vital stuff, but I forgot, and now you've missed it. Sorry about that.

Congratulations to Dave, by the way, whose fiftieth birthday party was on Saturday night. Karaoke has never really been my thing, but when a hundred people are singing along to I Will Survive at the tops of their voices it would have been churlish to stand apart. And it did teach millions of jilted women to change their locks, just to be on the safe side. It was a great night, and served to illustrate one of life's great lessons. If you go through life being a nice guy that everybody likes, then your birthday party is the time when that strategy really pays off.