The Easter holidays finished and as usual I am confronted with one of my gripes: Bank computer servers apparently go on holiday too! You send some money to one of your accounts on Good Friday only to find out it has not been handled until after Easter Monday. And here I was thinking in these IT driven times we did not have to cope with any interruption of services as computers never need to rest.
But the Easter bunny brought very good news indeed as well. When I was born over 60 years ago I thought they had broke the mold as since then in my family we kept on only producing babies of the male variety. But after three brothers, two sons,five nephews and 2 great nephews finally a baby girl in the family. Not that I don’t like men but as Obama always said : It was time for a change.
She is naturally the most beautiful girl in the world and already looking like me. The latter is not true but it sounded nice. Hopefully she will take after her gorgeous mum who looked like a movie star a few minutes after giving birth to her. I am afraid the idea of raising her gender neutral is definitely not going to happen as her granny, my sister -in-law, myself and my other sister-in-law are in dire need of girly clothes shopping. Plans have already been made.
Unlike the #metoo generation she will probably grow up to make full use of her beauty and intelligence to get and to be whatever she wants. Everything will be even more digital than today unless in the mean time Mr Trump and Mr Xi Jinping start a Trade war with actual weapons and Europe goes even further in using the assassination attempt on a former Russian spy and his daughter to start a fight with Russia. The result might be apocalyptic and bring us back to ground zero. This whole assassination thing so reminds me of the way World War I started. The so called war to end all wars. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. This was also a local affair which kick started the whole sorry episode. Will we ever learn? I don’t think so if I see and hear how intolerant people are with people living next door to them let alone when those people are from another background or country.
Millions of people are on the move fleeing war and famine. Instead of gathering our resources to help them so our own economy and life can be sustained we seem to only want that new car, ridiculously prided phone or new outfit.
Governments in many countries have upped their spending on the military instead of pouring it in refugee help or even better public transport so at least our environment will survive.
We actually only need a bit more time to have the twenties and thirties of today take over. It is my believe that they seem to be more and more aware that our generation is making the wrong decisions. They have grown up in a time where you don’t work all your life for the same employer and working a 4 day week makes sense be it to spend time on your hobbies or if you have them on your family. Let’s hope they get in charge on time.
Spring has brought the strange need to finally clean my house as the sun relentlessly shows the ancient spiderwebs,dusty shelves and doggy paws on everything. At least as far as the sun gets through those very dirty windows. I prefer to spend the time reading,writing or generally pottering around outside but I will give it a whirl as in May I am giving a big family BBQ to celebrate my successor’s birth and one of my Canadian cousin’s visit.
I found this list to be helpful for my fellow house cleaners and want to recommend the numbers 10 and number 14.
My dear hubby being quite a bit taller than myself has made the house completely spiderweb free. Which ticked the 10 box. So now for the rewards…
Just saw a rather funny news item about a train departing a busy Belgian station leaving the last carriage standing! I wish I could have seen the reaction on the faces of those unfortunates who were in that particular carriage. Not nice of me but I think it was hilarious. Trying unsuccessfully to find a nice picture about it I found that this is not the first time this has happened. The last time the train “lost”three carriages!
Have been reading an interesting article about Jane Gardam who has been a long time favorite of mine and found out she has written a trilogy I knew nothing about so I am looking forward to dig in to those. Am still plowing on through ‘A column of fire’ by Ken Follett, but it is not half as good as the first Kingsbridge novel ‘The pillars of the earth’. But maybe that also has to do with my passion for the Medieval times. The problems between Mary queen of Scots with queen Elizabeth I has been written about so superbly by Dorothy Dunnett in the Lymond Chronicles that everything after that is a mere rehash.
Right! My 20 years postponed hot flushes are driving me outside to stand in a North Easterly wind as scantily dressed as is possible within the bounds of propriety. Little did I know all those years ago I was not skipping those dreaded episodes but just pushing them ahead. The only solution if you want to quit HRT is to have a needle stuck in your neck in a nerve node about 4 times a year and that with only 60%b of success and a lot of nasty side effect risks. And this method is still under research. Bet it would be solved pronto if men suffered this phenomenon. All this time after Eve was pushed out of Paradise and no proper remedy has been found. They don’t even really know what precisely causes it. Alcohol definitely makes it worse, but is actually sorely needed. Hopefully I will be shot of it before I, as our accountant in England used to say when advising us to make a will, pop my clogs. It has been rather beneficial to our heating bill though my husband may move out if I put the heating down once more.
[social_warfare]