There's a lady on the moon who has to endure a lot. If left to her own devices she would spend her hours idly swinging her feet, because pretty feet make for pleasant occupation. Often have I seen her, scrutinizing her reflection in the glassy oceans with a secret gleeful vanity. However, every time she glances down at our ugly little earth, opaque clouds come scudding into her eyes. Only a few days ago she was startled out of her self-contented reverie by the realization that hundreds- thousands- of women, bedecked women straight out of a Fair&Lovely ad, were looking up at her with impersonal stares, a thousand smiles that scorched. Unnerved, she retired, a little hurt, more bewildered. So it has been. Often has she been unwilling witness to hastily breathed promises between skinny maidens and adenoidal lads by the shelter of April moonshine, which is all well and good and ought to be made into a zabardast movie or two, but which in reality drives our poor lady into fits of nervosa. How many times have lovers and murderers alike lurked under the eye of the moon. How often have fervent poets drunk with idealism and cheap whisky written odes to la belle luna. How often have foolish people like you and I leant upon our sleepless windowsills to yawn and gaze and imagine and sieved out inspiration with such careless abandon. Not always is obvious admiration the most welcome form of flattery. The lady I know with the lovely, brittle smile wishes away to distraction that for one season, one night, she would be left alone with her own assurance of her beauty, one night with only her naive conceit to comfort and sustain her.

Nowadays she counts the wrinkles on her white forehead. And wanes gratefully into the shadows as the month dies. The Astronomy Department publishes voracious theses for a month on the altered phases of the lunar cycle and we are momentarily satisfied.