Our solar system

These two balls turned up on the same day and immediately reminded me of the classroom exercise in which the teacher is the sun (of course) and various people take on the role of planets: Geoffrey Flynn with the permanent nasal discharge is Mercury (a ping-pong ball), early-developing Pauline Cumberbatch is the Earth (an orange), thieving Trevor McAlpine is Neptune (a blue balloon) and so on.

I don’t ever remember being picked to hold a round object as part of our solar system. I was more your “third king” at Nativity, with a modified lampshade for a crown, or the back row of the choir (and perhaps you might want to just mouth the words, Mark).