To the Roundhouse last night to see Urban, the new show from Circolombia, a company formed from graduates of a circus school for street kids in the Colombian city of Cali. They marry  street dance with acrobatics in a tumbling, teeterboarding, tightrope-walking, skipping, somersaulting sensation of a show. The video below, of an earlier performance, doesn’t really do them justice. If you’re anywhere near Brighton, they’re on there from May 11 until May 22.

A recent piece in The New York Times on rediscovering the romance of the window seat on planes has prompted a flood of window-seat photographs from readers. Which reminds me: flying isn’t something I’ve enjoyed much for a long time. Aloft by William Langewiesche, recently reissued as a Penguin classic, restores some of the wonder to it. Just as Norman Maclean, with A River Runs Through It, sent me back to fishing, so Langewiesche (almost) makes me want to be a pilot.

The barmen in India, too, are a more reflective lot than their counterparts in London. These gentlemen were serving the drinks at Dera Amer, an elephant polo camp near the city of Jaipur.

Back from India, and settling down to write about a trip on the Maharajas’ Express, I find myself scribbling notes such as “add ref to tighter security”. But in India, as this photo shows, even a brush with the security guards can be part of the entertainment:

A lovely Telegraph obituary this morning of Peter Porter, a poet who made an art of self-deprecation:

Porter himself liked to tell the story of how, when he won the 1983 Duff Cooper Prize, one of his daughters had remarked: “Oh, Daddy, that’s just like you! Why couldn’t you have won the Cooper Prize?”

Music to lift the tone of an election campaign? Laura Barton, in her Hail, Hail, Rock’n'Roll column in The Guardian yesterday, suggested Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ and Robert Wyatt’s Shipbuilding (with music by Clive Langer and lyrics by Elvis Costello). I’d add Sam Cooke’s contribution to the Civil Rights struggle, which itself was inspired by Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind: A Change Is Gonna Come.

Does Marks & Spencer have something against the travelling public? If not, why does it charge them so much more when they buy their lunch at a station rather than in the high street?
When I buy a sandwich from Marks at lunchtime, it’s usually at a branch 10 minutes’ walk from the office, off Victoria Street in London. It was press day today, I was short of time and I popped into the branch at the station itself. Pasta with spinach, for which I usually pay £2, was £2.19; orange juice, usually £1, was £1.35; and a sandwich of salmon and soft cheese, usually £2.80, was £3.25. So the total, instead of £5.80, was £6.79. Now what would justify that?

Naval hospitality isn’t what it used to be. The London Evening Standard reports this evening that hundreds of Britons stranded by the closure of airports are being brought home from the Spanish port of Santander on the warship HMS Albion.

Commander Geoff Wintle told the paper: “It’s a warship, so they won’t be used to the austere conditions, but they will get fresh rations, fish and chips for dinner tonight and curry tomorrow . . . but it’s not a five-star hotel. There’s a dry policy on board, so there won’t be any drinking.”

Trawling the Telegraph archives for an anthology of our best writing on journeys by water, I’ve recently come across some reports of the Falklands War in 1982 by my old colleague Charlie Laurence. Charlie sailed for the islands on the Canberra, which was taken out of the cruising circuit to carry troops. In one of his early despatches, he writes: “Warrant officers and non-commissioned officers are allowed three spirit tots and unlimited beer; junior NCOs and other ranks, two cans of beer.” Even the hacks were trusted to have the occasional pint.

And that was when they were on their way to war.

Skies full of ash; flights grounded. Can any good come of the volcanic roaring in Iceland? Yes, says Simon Winchester in The New York Times, recalling the artistic legacy of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883.

On Today on Radio 4 this morning, a contributor discussing the attitude of the Catholic Church towards contraception said three times that the clergy were beginning to take notice of “where people were at”. Later it was reported that a politician had said that British voters were “gagging for a change”. The contributor was from that venerable Catholic newspaper The Tablet; the politician was the leader of the Conservative Party. Just the sort of language you’d expect from them?