This week, I watched Downton Abbey’s season finale, listened to the audiobook of Terry Pratchett’s Making Money, and checked out the new Charles Dickens biography from the library. No wonder this Thursday’s three thought are very, very British.

1. Terry Pratchett is one of the world’s funniest, most creative authors. Could anyone else give a main character the first name of Moist and get away with it?
2. Daisy the kitchen maid’s hairdo for the Servant’s Ball in Downton Abbey’s season finale was a dead ringer for my second grade Sunday church ‘do. Do you think my mother fixed Daisy’s hair? If so, did Daisy have to sit still and watch Lawrence Welk while mom rolled her lovely locks?
3. Charles Dickens wrote fiction, but was not fictional himself. Therefore though his grandmother was a housemaid, she did not work at Downton Abbey because the Crawley family is fictional. And Dickens’ grandfather’s surname was not Moist, which is too bad. Because Dickens is one British author who could have matched the humor Terry Pratchett employed while using it.