On Friday morning's The Current (CBC Radio 1) there was a horrible item about the British problem with alcohol. Now it's not only pub-crawling adult yobs: it's 12- and 13-year-olds causing havoc in the streets, drunk from the pop-designer booze marketed at them and sold in supermarkets.

Someone actually phoned me while the item was still on the air to ask if I could think of an astrological explanation. I haven't had the time to look for anything complicated, but I did look at the map for the unification of England under Athelstan, my favourite mundane British map: 12 July 927 (Julian) at Eamont near Penrith, 54n40 2w44 (or 17 July New Style). Apparent Noon would be around 12:14.7 UT, at which time radix Sun is 23cn37.

Interesting: there is an approaching Mars-Neptune conjunction in the day-for-a-year secondary map. It will be exact on 16 August 2008. Where? At 23cn33! Heliocentric Saturn is in the picture too, at 8sg29. Many things can be expected from this occursion, but riotous inebriation is surely among them.