One of the best things about the "Alice" characters is the way they are ludicrous and unlikely, yet you do meet them out and about. Yesterday in central London I saw a man on a bicycle hung all over with extraordinary things. I plucked up courage to ask him what the washing-bowls fixed over the handle-bars were for. He informed me that they were to keep the wind off his hands when he was cycling, so they would stay warm. I should have waited to see if he burst into rhyme.