The day the earth stood still and ate Potato

For those of you who have been wearing ear defenders whilst living in a cave on the Isle of Lewis, today is National Potato Day, or La Fête La pomme de terre Nationale, if you've drawn the short straw and been born French. Anyone worth their salt is spending the day contemplating, preparing, cooking, gently cradling, and maybe even eating Potato - in all its heavenly forms. Traditionally, it is on this day that those who have shown bad feeling toward the Potato are driven out of towns and villages and out into the countryside, where they are rounded up and birched until they recant their folly. Believe it or not, this is a tradition which continued unabated right up until my conviction for actual bodily harm in 1998.