Benjamin

My boy has arrived safe and sound, thank-you Saint Christopher, Ben has always been dogged by bad travelling luck, whether coming here or just shuttling between Woking and Pompey to see his brother, so we made a two-pronged appeal to the Saint.

Tomorrow is some kind of bizarrely starred day. One friend is travelling, one having surgery, one an exam, and I have a job interview. I'm sure there must be separate saints for all those things, but what I need is a general practitioner saint.

In my house, two grown men were just discussing the different Ninja Turtles. Bizarre, but there's a new movie about them out on Friday.

A reader's letter to the Guardian said that the writer had recently holidayed in Mexico and was surprised to learn that the election promise of one candidate in the forthcoming elections is that he intends to rescind the tax that had been imposed to fund the Olympics. The Olympics in Mexico were held in 1968. I think there's a lesson here for both Vancouver and London.

A letter to the Times from a gentleman in his senior years complains that everyone now refers to him as 'dear'. When he pointed this out to a shop assistant she said, 'Sorry sweetheart.' I am looking at myself. I don't want to be patronised when I'm old (oh alright, even older) so I hope I don't do the same to seniors myself. I think I'm in the clear.

I loved this story in The Week about Margaret Thatcher, it almost endears her to me. I said ALMOST!! Anyroad, La Dame de fer had been to see a production of Amadeus at the National Theatre, and was shocked by the coarse language. She went to see the director afterwards and said, 'Mozart couldn't possibly have been like that.' Apparently he was though, which Peter Hall attempted to explain to her. The response,
'I thought I had just explained that, He.Couldn't. Have. Been. Like. That.'