Christopher Foyle and Samantha Stewart wonder what on earth Mike's on about this month..

Mike's Pith & Wind - Word of the week
If I had to nominate my favourite sounding word in the English language, I think it would be verisimilitude. If you’ve not come across it before, it means ‘giving the appearance of reality’, which you could almost guess given a few moments reflection. It’s not a word that you can contrive to use much in everyday conversation, unless perhaps you are in the business of lecturing in media studies specialising in mockumentaries, but I like to imagine scenarios (now there’s an overused word) where I might use it in a sentence without getting so excited that I cock it up, (it has got a few syllables), thereby sabotaging its promotion into everyday speech. (If I’m confirming some unease you’ve had about my ongoing mental state, put it down to the fact that the radio in the van has gone on the blink and my mind has been skating around without focus for days now).
Luckily my TV is still going strong for the moment, and I’ve just been watching the first in the ‘new’ series of Foyle’s War, a show that attempts to recreate for the viewer the ambience of England as it was in WW2 – this is just the sort of show about which it would be quite appropriate to use the word ‘verisimilitude’ in discussion with say, some other Foyle enthusiast.
If you’ve not seen it, Foyle’s War is about Christopher Foyle, a wartime policeman, portrayed (by Michael Kitchen) as the last word in English phlegm, (another neato word, but mainly ‘cause it’s identical in every way to the mucus ‘phlegm’, the nemesis of singers and speakers), and although I’ve not read the books from which the series is derived, Foyle’s read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Remembering Bill
The naked couple burst out of the upstairs’ door of the opposite house and ran bouncing and screaming erratically down the stairs until they were lost from view behind the fence. The Bishop, until that moment frozen in the amiable rigor mortis of having his portrait painted, jumped as his Anglican faith was overcome by the sight of parishioners in exuberant pursuit of copulation. This sudden movement woke Hieronymus Fang Merkin, ex-student cat of uncertain years, from her slumber on the Prelate’s lap. All irascibility and razor-sharp claws, she dug deep into his groin, causing his mood to change from mere astonishment to one of transcendent pain. He ascended, not to heaven, but at least a good metre above the carved chair.
“Perhaps we should call it a day,” remarked W. A. (Bill) Sutton, putting the brushes back into the turpentine. read more