Regular readers of It’s Only Fashion will have missed us for the last two days. We had a corrupted database. From what I understand, it took a package from a North Korean agent in a black wool coat and dark glasses. Of course, anyone else would have known the agent was suspicious because it’s something like 90° and he’s wearing a black wool coat. Our database, however, was naive and unsuspecting. I hope it has learned its lesson.

Perhaps though, like Thomas Bailey Aldrich, it was distracted by two petals falling from a rose:

MY mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour—
’T was noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May— 5
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

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