Quote Of The Day

Dalrymple muses on public debt and the UK economy :

"London is the Athens of the North"

Apologies ...

For light to non-existent blogging. I've just started a new piece of work for a new company and the learning curve is steep. By the time I get home, eat, maybe help with homework, I'm mentally all thought-out.

I was in beautiful Gower last weekend with no internet connection, too. Inshallah by this weekend I'll be able to put digit to keyboard again.

A Fine Romance ...

The local candidate standing for election for a party I find altogether despicable, is handsome -in a tall, dark kind of way; a Mr Rochester if ever I saw one.

Curiously I find him all the more attractive because his views on life and liberty would never correspond with mine.

Just before seven pm I was cooking chicken pie and making some Cornish pasties. There was a knock at the door.

This could have been the opening to one of the great love stories - or alternatively one of the great erotic fantasies.

Tragically, our dashing hero doesn't play up to the script.

He seemed at a loss, and remarked upon the number of shoes we have in our hall.

Maybe real life can never be like that. No vote here, time is short, many doors to knock on.

But I really wanted him to ask me why I wasn't going to vote for him.

I wanted him to fix me to the spot with a gimlet stare and demand an answer.

And perhaps one or two other things. It's an interesting thought - a candidate responding to an opposition voter with a passionate appeal as a starter for ten. No wife or daughter safe. Would certainly enliven the campaign, one way or the other.

I guess a candidate in a hopeless seat might take a punt. But it would have been a grand, romantic , quixotic and politically highly dangerous gamble in what should be a reasonably safe Tory seat. As the ancient joke puts it, chiselled candidate James Morris didn't realise how close he was to getting in well before polling day.