It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.
Ever since the economic crisis in 2008, millions of people have accepted cuts in all sorts of things - from real wages and living standards to benefits and hospital care - without any real opposition. The cuts may be right, or they may be stupid - but the astonishing thing is how no-one really challenges them.
The nomads' egalitarian lifestyle astonished the Greeks, who kept their own women indoors weaving and minding children. The exotic Scythian lifestyle fueled the Greek imagination and led to an outpouring of myths about fierce Amazons, 'the equals of men.'
Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that 'I want to convert.' Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: 'Better one of them should die than one of us.'
I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this - never to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening.
Job was astonished at seeing Almighty God so intent on doing good to us that He seems to have nothing more at heart than to love us and to induce us to love Him in return.
The prescience of the founding fathers continues to astonish me. They were freedom fighters. They made America. They gave us this magical country. They also were slaveowners - which is confusing to their legacy. How could such brilliant men have only secured freedom for themselves, but not their wives or their slaves?
The pace of digital innovation is astonishing. It's impossible to imagine life without the web, smartphones, social networks. And yet the consumer products and everyday objects all around us are still essentially dumb.
If some longing goes unmet, don't be astonished. We call that Life.
I do admire actors who manage to lose huge amounts of weight for roles: you have to have astonishing discipline to do that to your body and maintain it for a certain length of time before letting yourself go back to normal.
