Charles Nevin: What goes up must come down

Start the week...

Happy Monday. Have you noticed that a five-tonne, 20-year-old satellite is about to fall to Earth? Nasa doesn't know where it will land, but reckons the odds of any of it landing on anyone are 3,200-1. Worth a £1 punt, I'd have said, as some compensation if it's someone you know. And remarkable things do happen. Did you see Nancy Dell'Olio on Saturday night? Not only that, but a man in Mississippi has walked out of a grocery store with two live lobsters, a pork loin and a couple of bags of prawns stuffed down his shorts. Police realised something fishy was going on when he used the pork loin to resist arrest.

Today, 78 years ago, Leo Szilard, the noted Hungarian scientist, conceived of the nuclear chain reaction while he was waiting for the lights to change so he could cross Southampton Row in London's Bloomsbury. In tribute, why not have a go yourself before the little green man flashes to that urgent beep-beep? Here are some areas in need of your inspiration: 1. Plunging satellite protection. 2. Fabio Capello's English. 3. The weather. 4. Mayonnaise stains. 5. George Osborne. 6. Bankers. 7. Saggy knees. 8. Static travelling. 9. Those misty bits in the double glazing. 10. Giving somebody other than the bloody Brontës a go.

Wednesday is the 108th anniversary of the birth of Roy Acuff of the Smoky Mountain Boys. You will have your favourites by "The Caruso of Mountain Music"; mine is "Goodbye My Love (I Heard A Silver Trumpet)" . Friday is the feast day of St Enid, Saxon royal bastard and nun. St Dunstan attended the dedication of a church she built in Wilton and wept throughout, explaining that Enid was going to die in three weeks, which rather put a dampener on things. She did, too.

Bored with commuting? I commend to you Lt-Col Jack Churchill, born Friday, 1912. Jack had a good war, including lethal bow-and-arrow action in Normandy in 1940 and capturing 50 Germans with the aid of one corporal in Italy in 1943. Back on Civvy Street, he used to enliven his journey home by flinging his briefcase out of the train window before getting out at the next station, walking home and retrieving it from the bottom of his garden. Happy Monday.