Interesting that the 'feckless' Greeks have (eventually) voted for austerity (maybe) - much to the relief of everyone, where as the French have decided to take the third way, which I guess might well make their position a bit more precarious in the months to come. Although I've not written about it much recently, I've continued to keep a close eye on the international economy, as whatever happens out there will undoubtedly hurt us here. Whichever way I look at it though, the problem still seems to come back to the same thing - the banks. Their efforts got us into this fine mess, and are well and truly keeping us here. DC keeps talking about the need for strong banks, but it does seem that whilst banks remain in private hands, self-interest is the only thing that drives them. Am I becoming socialist in my old age?
We're having a quieter spell for a bit...we've had a mad, hectic few months, so we're trying to cut down on our gallivanting. So this week we're out only twice. Thursday it's dinner with friends, and tomorrow we're off to watch some Pina Bausch at Sadlers Wells. Somewhat embarrassingly we'd invited two friends along, only to discover that for the first time ever we'd bought just two tickets for our selves, so we had to un-invite them. I wonder if we'll stay on their Christmas Card list?
I'm utterly exhausted at the moment...it may be the lack of summer, it may be all those rehearsals (a total of 188 hours, of which we've done perhaps 40%), it may be that I've not been anywhere near my cycle for months as the rain continues to pelt down so my fitness levels are nearing an all time low, or it may just be age. Whatever, I have to find a way of re-energising myself.
In between Olympics rehearsals I spent most of my time trying to sort out the blog, having tried to change the template much to the frustration of The Cat''s Mother I think who probably would have liked me to give her some more (any) attention. I lost the comments section, which is odd because I managed to use a new 'dynamic' template and got comments elsewhere...so I'm not quite sure what's happening there. I've still not got comments on the mobile version of the blog, and I no longer get comment notifications...but at least I'm better off than I was Saturday morning. I shall no doubt continue to mess around until I get to where I want it.
We've decided to move our fabulous bird table. Actually it's mine, not ours, as it was a 50th birthday present from The Boy and The Cat. When I say 'bird table' its actually become a squirrel table. The little fluffy rats either scamper up the central pole or take an Eval Kneival leap from the bushes behind to stuff their fat faces. The birds get a bit of a look in...indeed we've had some beautiful birds in the garden...mostly feeding off the seed which the squirrels have knocked onto the ground. My personal favourite was the jackdaw pair...mainly because I don't think I've seen one before. But at the end of the day there's a limit to how man squirrel families you want to keep, so it's now somewhere that means the squirrels can't leap on to it, and the judicious application of Vaseline to the supporting pole will keep the squirrels off - we tried Vaseline before and had hours of amusement as they jumped on and then gracefully slid down. Hopefully by keeping it greased up, they'll learn not to bother.....after all squirrels are not persistent blighters are they?
