D. tells me that the dowdy little dresses I said the youngest British schoolgirls are stuffed into are voluntary. They’re for summer, she says. They’re cooler. Some girls (or their parents, which is not at all the same thing) prefer them. Furthermore, at least in some schools the boys don’t have the option of wearing shorts in hot weather, which some boys consider discrimination. In 2011, a twelve-year-old boy wore a uniform skirt to school as a protest. A loophole in the rules meant that he was still wearing an acceptable uniform, the clever little devil.

You may be interested to note that if you follow the link to that article, the end disappears quickly and you can’t read it unless you take a phony survey designed to prove that some brand of shampoo is better than chocolate and a sunny day all rolled into one. It will also make you so sexy you’ll give up chocolate voluntarily. Which does seem contradictory, but what do I know about marketing? I’m just the sort of contrarian who wouldn’t take their alleged survey and as a result I don’t know what the rest of the article says, so I can only hope it doesn’t say April Fool. Probably not. The date is May.

Irrelevant photo: celandine, a wildflower–one of spring’s early ones, but still in bloom.