Daily catch-up: The Blair-Clinton transcripts and another genuine shop name

Welcome to the Corbyn-free round up of trivia (plural of trivium) and other important things

Another prize specimen for my collection of Genuine Shop Names. The Marquis de Salade is a real restaurant in Budapest – thanks to Alastair Meeks. Perhaps the Prime Minister went there yesterday on his grand tour of European capitals.

• This catch-up is now a Corbyn-free zone. As Martin Kettle says, "perhaps we should let Labour go for a while. As a party of government, it has left the electorate behind to go on a voyage from which it may or may not return." (Kettle's analysis of why George Osborne switched from sunlit uplands to darkling vale yesterday is very good.) Except that I will note contributions made by Peters Kellner and Mandelson.

• The 532 pages of transcripts of conversations between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton published yesterday have attracted a lot of interest. What strikes me is the economy of both the small and the big talk. A couple of sentences of silly jokes about bananas and into the hard politics of Kosovo or Northern Ireland, and always short conversations, dense with information and calculation. Although Clinton likes to range widely, it's usually for a purpose and they get through a great deal in short bursts.

The Blair-Clinton transcripts are the product of a Freedom of Information request (under US law) made by the BBC of the Clinton Presidential Library, and just happened to be published on the same day the Foreign Affairs Committee published transcripts, supplied to it by Blair, of Blair's two phone calls to Colonel Gaddafi from 25 February 2011. More primary source material for "The Blair Years" that I am co-teaching with Jon Davis at King's College, London, from 18 January. The 30-year rule for official documents is currently being phased to a 20-year rule, but both these releases have got ahead of the timetable: this year we are getting the papers from 1989 and 1990.

• This by John Kelly at Oxford Dictionaries on the etymology of short farm words ending in g, such as dog, frog, hog, pig and stag, is engrossing. It is all about medial gemination.

• And finally, this is from Albro two years ago but I still like it:

"Is your refrigerator running?"

"Hasn't decided yet," I say, winking at my refrigerator and hanging up. A "FRIDGE 2016" banner hangs above him.