15 July—Just as meteorologists in the United States flock to Punxsutawney in Pennsylvania on 2 February, meteorologists in the United Kingdom trek to Saint Swithun’s Bridge in Winchester on 15 July to supplement their science—also known as guesswork—and predict what the weather will be in the short term. Briefly, if it rains on Saint Swithun’s Bridge, the norm in Blighty, it will continue to rain for 40 days; or 40 days of sun if it doesn’t rain.

15 July is Saint Swithun’s (or Saint Swithin’s) feast day. He was Bishop of Winchester from 852 to 863 (AD, of course). His best-known miracle was when he restored a woman’s basket of eggs that workmen had maliciously broken. (Sounds like it could have happened yesterday in New York.) Swithun’s head is in Canterbury Cathedral and one arm is in Peterborough Abbey. That’s what they do with saintly remains. And that’s all you want to know.

The weather over all the bridges in Litchfield so far today is sunny, hot, and humid. So now on to other, less momentous, news.

The alleged Trump assassination attempt. Of course. The big surprise is that Joe Biden, Richie Blumenthal, and Christopher Murphy (to name but three) haven’t (yet) taken the perfect opportunity to rail against guns. Evidently, like most of the other pols of all persuasions, they’re too busy calling for unity and offering their perfunctory prayers and condolences.

Okay, Republican idiots like M.T. Greene and J.D. Vance are taking the opportunity to vilify Biden and the Democrats as having incited the shooting-gone-wild; and Democrat idiots are accusing Trump of staging it.

Alleged assassination attempt? Well, the FBI hasn’t been able to come up with a motive for the crime. So it must be no more than coincidence that Thomas Crooks, the shooter, was a registered Republican but had contributed 15 bucks to a Democrat group a couple of years ago. For a kid—for anybody—working in a nursing home, that must have been a lot of money. Assuming young Crooks was in fact aiming at Trump, it shouldn’t take the FBI’s artificial intelligence to reason that the kid wanted to save the republic and democracy from the evil clutches of the tyrant Trump. And prove his own mettle in the bargain.

For all we know, young Thomas was a true patriot for whom actions spoke louder than words; and as he pulled the trigger he could have been thinking, “Sic semper tyrannis!” “Thus always to tyrants!” That’s what John Wilkes Booth had shouted after mortally shooting Abraham Lincoln for what he considered a good reason.

And we don’t know for sure that Thomas Crooks was aiming at Trump anyway, do we? Given that the kid was such a lousy shot that he couldn’t even make his high school’s junior varsity shooting team, he may well have been aiming his father’s “assault rifle” at someone else. Lucky he didn’t have a bump stock. (It’s refreshing to know that high schools are still allowed to have shooting teams.)

Then there’s poor Trump. After a bullet grazed his ear, he was knocked down and everybody and his Uncle Sam piled on top of him as if he had fumbled a football. He may be big, but the poor guy is 78, after all . . .