Spring's heading in all schizophrenic. It's dark, it's light, it's dark again - as if some vast kitchen fluorescent needs a new starter plug. The temperature too is bi-polar. Godzilla's out in the Nihonkai opening and closing a giant refrigerator. So they say.

In Japan people who drive trains, airline attendants, and those in similar vocations, well, they do this odd pointing thing. They just point at stuff. It looks weird. I once watched a train driver point at the train cab windscreen 39 times between Wakayama and Osaka. On JAL flights stewardesses lock the cabin doors and then point at them. I saw this too. The pointing is a mnemonic. Like, "Hmmm, did I lock the cabin doors so no one gets sucked out at 5,000 feet? Yeah, I remember I did, 'cause I foolishly pointed at it just after I'd done it". See?

I lose a lot of tickets. Cinema tickets, flight tickets, bus tickets, dry cleaning tickets, multi-million yen winning lottery tickets, all of that. Mostly train tickets though. Often I wear trousers sporting eight pockets. This is stupid. That's a lot of pockets to lose tickets in. So I decide to try the ridiculous pointing thing. I put a train ticket in one of my pockets (meaning 7 wrong pockets were immediately created) and then, after first checking around to make sure no one was looking which they always, always are because I'm white and blonde and a nail that needs a real good hammering down, pointed at the pocket with the ticket in. I felt stupid. There I am on a station platform pointing at my own arse. I boarded the train feeling foolish (though I did manage to get off another, slightly sly little point - for good measure).

I didn't lose the ticket. I didn't rummage slightly panic-stricken through seven inconveniently placed erroneous pockets, as commuters swarmed over me by the ticket gates. I remembered having pointed. See? The pointing works! I've converted to pointing.