Abracadabra!

Outside my window, a little while ago, a group of Japanese students arrived outside the gene bank, on a visit, clearly having been in the fields and about to continue their tour inside. I noticed they were all wearing black wellingtons, and when I looked up again a minute later they had all - every single one, as if choreographed - whipped out brightly-coloured shopping bags (the durable woven-plastic kind you can buy in every market here, and everywhere in the world) and were as one carefully removing their wellies and replacing them with neatly-wrapped indoor shoes.

It was extraordinary, like a sudden flowering - with a military flourish. I have no idea where all these shopping bags from - they were concealed in their rucksacks, I suppose, but they might as well have conjured them out of thin air to brighten this dull, hazy day. And it made me smile that the members of our staff who were accompanying them were nowhere near as organised, wiping their muddy shoes off on the muddy grass.