What has happened?

In Britain we tend to compensate for our summer's uncanny impersonation of winter by over-exposing ourselves to the sun when it occasionally turns up. But when you need sanctuary from the heat, heavy curtains are never very cool.

If someone has a twisted sense of humour, it is not necessarily the band themselves. Tonight's gilded venue, home to English National Opera, is tiered like a wedding cake, though the Hoylake wizards choose to perform a mercilessly unadorned acoustic concert. In their usual casual duds, they could be in their Wirral rehearsal rooms; only singer James Skelly's fresh pudding-bowl cut,acknowledged the presence of an audience.

American scientists are warning that the humble plastic shower curtain is responsible for releasing more than 100 toxic chemicals into homes, including some suspected of causing cancer or having gender-bending effects.

There was something surreal about the gilded proscenium stage in the courtyard of Garsington Manor; still more about the formally attired gentleman silently emerging from between its red, crushed-velvet curtains.

"I'm asking you to back a horse that's good for glue," sings Guy Garvey on "Starlings", the opening track of Elbow's fourth album – though on the evidence here, this band is far from ready for the knacker's yard.

This was a fairly ordinary three-bedroomed house in west London when I first moved in, but I wanted light, space and minimalism.