Le Weekend

The weekend that is currently still in progress due to the public holiday today has been an exceptionally nice one. I took S to the theatre on Saturday evening to see Donkey Years at the Comedy Theatre. The play was wonderful, with a grand cast, and a wonderful script. It was also delicously topical, and the scene in which the junionr under secertary for education wondererd around with his trousers around his ankles, pjs covered in shaving foam, as he tried to get all the men out of his room so that the masters wife could escape was hilarious. The mad frentic energy on display brought tears to the eye, and I am sure that most of the Brits in the audience were thinking of two shags Prescott at that!

After the theatre we went out for dinner, and eyed up a large bowl of chilies but decided against it. It did lead on to a discussion of inappropriate first date food and we agreed that spagehti or noodles were a big no on first date meals out!

Sunday I slept late and then drove down to Southampton to see an old friend from university - can't quite believe it will be ten years next year since I went up to university - as she was having friends down for her birthday. A nice meal out, but I drank too much wine. I did learn a valuable lesson - never end the evening with Irish Coffee! My poor head felt like sand paper this morning. But it was a grand night out, and M kindly let me sleep over in the guest bedroom. The other lesson I re-discovered was that deep and meaningful conversations about the meaning of life always happen when one is drunk, and yet that is always the wrong time to have them!

Politics this week has been quietish. The UK press was getting a tad animated about Al Gore's appearance at the Cannes film festival and wondering if it is the start of his comeback and campaign to win the 2008 Presidential Election. On a personal note I submitted my fast stream application, so will now have to see what happens.

The major American political news story covered this side of the Pond was the supposed shooting on the Hill! Talk about a non event spun out of all proportion. LEAs reacted as one would expect, but the rolling news stations (whose tag lines should collectively be 'never wrong for long') went nuts devoting all resources to it, when all they could say was 'something might of happened but we don't know!' Hmmm - not sure what this says about modern society, but at least it didn't shake the markets that much. Not that they need much shaking right now given the volatility on the DJ and FTSE over the last two / three weeks. Not sure this is a good time to put any money in to my unit trusts, but I guess no time is a good time!

The big domestic political story this past week has been Blair's trips to Iraq and the US and then John Reid's criticism of the Home Office. Interesting times ahead as always, and the more I think about it the more I feel that it will be John Reid who succeeds Tony Blair rather than Gordon Brown. Reid has done both domestic and international jobs as SoS, whilst Brown is appearing more and more as a number cruncher with no experience outside HMT. Perhaps this is simply my own bias, and I know I should remain neutral on this, but somehow I think the Labour Party MPs will want a charismatic leader able to go toe to toe with Paxman and Humphries at the BBC and Cameron at the dispatch box. Gordon can do the latter but not the former, whilst Reid can probably do both. Interesting times, and on that note I need to go and get some laundry done and then go back to bed as I have not had enough sleep this weekend.

Over and out for now.