Everything's coming up tulips

I don't normally put up such blurred photos, but these were some i took spontaneously on the way in from work. There's just outside the house and the fruit of some few hours in the autumn. Tulips and daffs all the way...the idea was to get the place looking like a wild woodland and it has worked. I thought the tulips would make it look rather silly, but this hasn't been the case at all. I'm a bit more encouraged and will spend a few more hours again next autumn doing even more to the garden.

We are currently living in an entirely schizoid economic situation. In the south the government has decided that the tax and be damned approach will be the best one to take. Suddenly they have discovered their republican (with a small r) stripes. Lovely. good. I'm all for it. Except that it ain't those that should be taxed that are being taxed. It's the people who have long carried the burden which will be squeezed even more. Although it doesn't really affect us, because guess what, we live in the North, where Gordon Brown has decided that we must now spend our way out of the recession. Yes and what if you have no money Gordon. oh you mean you spend your way out of the recession...i see...you don't have any money either...so i don't really know what you're planning to do.

Peter told me that it was all well and good me saying that it was high time that people stopped spending. That it took a recession to make people come to their senses and stop doing daft things. It's a bit like Let Them Eat Cake in reverse. You are not really affected by it. It's not like i'm not affected by it, i certainly am. It's just that i never spent like that. Even at the height of the boom times, i would still rather cook than buy a ready made meal, go for a walk by the Lagan than trash the cash on things people trash cash on...i don't even know what this might be and make and mend rather than buy new. And buy from charity shops, of course. The only thing i've really felt the whole thing pinching on is less meals outside...but even then, that was going to stop with the advent of work. No more cafes.

I was watching an episode of Sex in the City a couple of days ago. And that was like archival footage. Investment bankers from Bear Stearns were a decided catch and Samantha's slutty ways were considered delicious and exciting. Apart from the clothing i actually find SITC insulting to women. I agree entirely that it's actually about gay men. The women are not women at all but a gay man's idea of what women are. They are truly simulacrums - and of course the most 'liberated' Samantha is not liberated at all. In fact as the series progresses it is she who gets into the most ridiculous and dangerous positions and finally, in the end, she is punished for being an unhinged nymphomaniac by being struck down with cancer. And worse, she ends up at the age of 50 by being alone. Of course they say it is all her choice, but the moral of the story is that sluts don't prosper.

So why do i watch it? For the outfits - and the car crash nature of the material. Because it is truly pure escapism.

And because it's on so late that its about the only thing which is watchable after i've had my nap after putting the kids to sleep.

It seems that as summer progresses we are getting busier and busier. There doesn't seem to be any let up and things will go on at this fevered pitch until July when it all calms down and people empty the offices - if they haven't emptied it already - and head for wherever it is they head for. I love the silence of summers in the office. If we don't have rain this year, it will be baking hot and nothing will stir. It will be cool and dark inside and the shade the trees lend us will be mercifully dappled.

I can't wait. Ah summer...