Today I have a contest for you! First I want to talk about collective nouns. Everybody knows there are collective nouns for everything:

A murder of crows A smack of jellyfish A hush of librarians An annoyance of mobile phones A babel of words A squint of proofreaders A muse of blogs (I just made this one up)

The list goes on, or does it? My extensive search has led me to believe that there is no collective noun for a group of collective nouns! Hence the contest, I will give a marvellous prize, plus global recognition to whoever comes up with the best collective noun for a group of collective nouns. And as today is international tattoo day, an extra prize if the winner were to have the word tattooed onto their shoulder. Did you know we have 36 items in the library dealing with tattoos and, at the moment, none dealing with tattoo removal? We may need to redress the balance after today. Happy Collective Nouning, Marcos PS In Gatton's reference collection there is a marvellous book called "A parliament of owls" about, yes you guessed it, collective nouns.