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After downloading a clip of Angel singing Mandy,I found myself wondering why there are so many songs in which the female object of desire (or, in the case of The Kinks's Lola, the feminine gendered object of desire) is addressed by name, and so few where the male love interest is thus apostrophised. A quick survey amongst friends produced a list of songs featuring named women which looked likely to stretch on till the crack o' doom: Michelle, (ma belle), (dear) Prudence, Mustang Sally, Eileen (come on), Little Susie (wake up), Snoopy (hold on), Jean (you let me get lucky wi' you), Cecilia (I'm down on my knees), Wendy (wanna die with you on the streets tonight). I could go on, but you get the idea. Whereas in the women-addressing-named-men category we came up with precisely three: (Hey) Mickey, Fernando (can you hear the drums?) and Chiquitita (you and I cried). The last two are, of course, by Abba, who being Swedish may not have realised how culturally abnormal this is. I have no idea how to explain the discrepancy, but I think it's intriguing.

On a totally different note, the baby hare survived the night. Yay! I found a really helpful German website describing exactly how to look after leverets, so this morning I went off to the vet to buy kitten milk substitute and fennel tea (Germans have this obsession with fennel tea), which we fed to her from a syringe. She's perked up no end and spent a happy half hour hopping round the computer room (now she's asleep on my lap again). I'm much more confident after this success that we have a chance of keeping her alive until she's big enough to be released. Bex has been really helpful and really good at feeding her - perhaps it's genetic, as her paternal great grandfather reared various wild animals when he was younger, including a fox, a crow, a fawn and a squirrel. She certainly doesn't get it from me, as I have been the kiss of death for everything I've attempted to rescue up till now.