Cups

The kids brought me breakfast in bed today. A cup of tea, three speculoos biscuits and a note saying "GOOD MORNING MAMMY". After a mere three hours sleep (no reason - how annoying is that) the capital letters hurt my eyes a bit.

Despite the tiredness and the tea being too weak ('fortnight' as the heritage of my Grandad and Dad impel me to call it), with too little milk and clearly made with warm, not boiling water, probably straight out of the hot tap... it was still the highlight of the day.

Among today's many frustrations were:

- The insistence of those seeking freelancers on giving work to the cheapest and least qualified folk.

- The insistence of one of the few clients with the sense to choose wonderful me on giving me a low rating on price despite her delight with my fabulous work and despite my bid being for a fixed price so she could have chosen one of the cheap unqualified folk if she'd wanted it done cheap and, and, and, despite it working out (with all those tiresome hours) at not much more than minimum wage rather than the £15 per hour industry standard.

- Syria. Bloody hell will someone just ever *do* something?

- Government money for banks. Again. NO. Will they never learn? Let me spell it out in easy words. The banks will never fix things. Ever. They are laughing at us. The rain in Britain? That's not caused by the Jet Stream moving, that's caused by the low pressure created by ten thousand bankers sucking in breath for one huge guffaw at our stupidity in keeping on giving them money. So give us the money. Or even better give it to Councils. No, no, hear me out. Make them spend it on council houses - like building new ones - or on essential infrastructure. And then watch that money trickle down into the pockets of brick factory workers, carpenters, digger drivers, apprentices and then on to the communities in which they all live; the hairdressers, shopkeepers, and yes, even bankers. But they get their money last, not first.

- Shopping. I know it's Friday the 13th, but we don't really go in for that superstition nowadays, so was it really necessary for the supermarket's power to fail just as I arrived? Meaning no tills? Meaning no shopping? Of course that is worse for the supermarket than me, and especially for the lady with the full trolley and the card transaction part way through, but still - with Syria and the banks and everything it wasn't ideal to have dinnner / baking plans thrown into jeopardy.

Of course, it's not all bad. (Mind you, there's also the bug I just found chewing on my already bug-bite swollen arm, and the rubbish dinner I cooked, and FaceTime *never* working.) Given the failure of Cif's marketing folk to send me another bottle of the wonder 'floor' cleaner after yesterday's blip, I was delighted to find a supermarket own-brand version for a mere 50 centimes.

So, it comes to this: the best things in my day were lukewarm tea and cheap yellow cleaning stuff.

Ok, ok. So there's also the wall to wall sunshine, and the lack of torture, starvation or amateur violinists forming part of my daily routine. And the Now Show's back on. And this website link from Mr B amused me, if just because it made me (with my brain firmly closed to all it really means) feel thin. But I think the French are probably fibbing about their results.

But don't worry. Mr B's back tomorrow and I'll have a grown up to talk to again. Poor fella.

Anyway, here's one of the weeds I tolerate in the garden. Can't remember what it's called, but I love the way the plates of flowers curl up into a cup shape as the sun sets. Which is just what I feel like doing too. Tomorrow being the 14th July, there are fireworks tonight in town. They start at a distinctly child-unfriendly 10.30pm. But the kids are still watching Doctor Who so maybe we'll wander to the end of the mosquito ridden road and have a look out for them.

EDIT: Another annoyance: Lightroom uploader not working, resulting in random punctuation. I HATE that.