Has anyone shouted April Fools at you recently? If so, you too are suffering from the bizarre phenomenon that is April Fools day. I say bizarre, because in my mind it's the equivalent of a chihuahua in terms of holidays; pointless, really, but we keep it going anyway.
It's the day everyone tries to be funny, or smart, or both. As it's the day after Easter, this leads to some inner turmoil among those of us who attempt this state all year round. You've spent the last 24 hours eating far more chocolate egg than you probably meant to, because it'd be wrong otherwise, and now people are deliberately lying to you.
Some of them fall harder than a brick lemming. I'm not entirely sure the White House understands the basis of April Fools, because it gave us a straight-up joke; an American take on the old toilet-roll advert involving a baby in a suit. The only people who may have been deceived by that write pamphlets for the Tea Party.
Others are disturbingly believable. Dave Mustaine re-uniting with Metallica was one, which seems inevitable once they hit a wall individually, and Twitter charging users to use vowels- but not "y"- could have been the result of a Welsh takeover.
I wouldn't mind, really, if there was some sort of filter you could apply to emails. One example- I received a load of mail from various shopping outlets advertising deals, such as 70% off clothes on Amazon. How do I know these aren't April Fools' jokes in disguise?
It's like Nick Cleggs' gaff from the last general election, about not raising tuition fees. He forgot to shout "April Fools!", and it was a pretty late one, but the point remains. How do you know the real joke's not on you?
I may be speaking for a minority here, but I've just spent the last day gorging on chocolate, surrounded by rabbits, baby chickens and shiny paper. I'm not ready for anything more surreal than that.