Home life

Friend returned to his new done up flat yesterday. Apparently he was dolorous at first - it wasn't the black pit of despair he had known and loved - but the lady who has done most of the work stayed with him, talked to him, groomed his hair a little... the fact that he trusted her with scissors is very important, as was his voluntary bath and hairwash in the morning. Fingers crossed for him; the house won't stay spick and span nor will it be his home until he has imposed some mess upon it, but as a friend observed, it will be a clean mess. So this then is hopefully the beginning, or the beginning of hope. My fingers are crossed for his happiness. Let's be done with sorrow for this year!

To that end, we were visiting my Spanish cousin, his girlfriend and her visiting mother and aunt. They said they would put 'some appetisers'* out, so we decided to be wise and eat first, a pizza down in Blackheath. I had forgotten the feeding powers of Spanish Mothers. We turned up, nicely replete, only to be greeted with a table groaning under plates of nosh and a follow up paella. Manners and deliciousness required that we stuff our faces a second time. I needed to be rolled home and can't face breakfast even now.

They gave us a gift, I have no idea why, but it's quite fun; a mosaic lamp with a very slight steampunk air to it. Looks great on the mantelpiece. More relatives are coming next weekend. I must try not to eat my own body weight in food in some crazy attempt to be polite. Right now my stomach is making ominous sounds. Pressing it, even gently, would be a foolhardy venture.

*Their quotes, not mine.

Black Friday

When you face antagonism and even violence to buy something you don't want, because it costs less than it did when you knew you didn't want it.

How these people cut their food and chew at the same time beats me.

From John 'Cunningman' Egan

'To bomb or not to bomb. That, we are told, is the essential question. But what we are not told is the game that is being played behind closed doors. The game of pipelines for fossil fuels in which the competing teams have much to lose, or gain. Let us consider their rules, unrevealed, as a rule.

On the one hand, there is the USA, EU, Nato and the despots of the Gulf. On the other are lined up Russia, China, Iran and Syria. Each want a pipeline to be built that meets their own scheme of things. Naturally they do not want the other to operate. Hence the Islamic State is invented to screw the pitch or deliver the goods, depending where you stand.

Each team cannot possibly discuss anything so vulgar as money or profits so they resort to words like "values" and "security" to bolster their reasons for joining in a fight. Nor can there be any talk of oilfields captured by IS supplying unmet need and dark money changing hands on borders wide open, unpatrolled. No peeping, please

Neither can there be indiscreet references to funding of rebels or arms supplied to malcontents, or support for fanatics now demonised. Rather, let there be bombs dropped, for that is the way of war, so much more macho than shutting out the demons by cutting off their sources of money and guns. Meanwhile the pipelines wait for the winners in this murky fossil fuel war.'