First weekend back at home after a most brilliant trip to South Africa. Happy to say, the memories are still as vivid as the tan is still intact.
Returning first to Paris, the late 'fall-out' from Christmas had to be tackled: numerous postal notifications that parcels could not have been delivered while we were gone. For practical reasons - we did not want to fill up our suitcases with prezzies handed to us in South Africa and rather stuff them with local memorabilia and momentos - we gave each other stuff we had on our wish list on Amazon.co.uk.; and it worked brilliantly. Emily had to hire a taxi to the post office to pick up her gifts, a procedure repeated by myself on Wednesday.
At work everythign worked smoothly, no substantial backlog of work had accumulated over the past 3 weeks. On Friday my office welcomed four MEPs, an opportunity to vent my disdain for the euro, and to gloat over the 5% fall of the euro's value since the start of the year. More than ever, my contention written in my doctoral thesis some 15 years ago, that the eurozone - back then still in the process of preparation - would not survive two business cycles, holds as true today as back then. After the first boom & bust cycle, the eurozone looks like a conglomerate of limping and forlorn states brushing with various degree of financial ruin. In my eyes the EU commission's duty would be to declare Chapter-11 and to dissolve the doomed "union." It was good to take the European guests to an American restaurant, serving American wine, and rubbing in salt into the gaping wounds of our patients from the continent. It's good to see that, already in the absence of any legitimation from voters, the EU witnesses how the rug of secured financing is also being pulled from underneath their feet. Yes, I wholeheartedly applaud the doom heading towards the Soviet-EUnion, and its rapid demise.
When Boris asked me later, "you didn't mention anything adverse to our European friends, did you?" I just shrugged. After which BJ mumbled, "oh dear, this will cost London another 30 free tickets for the Olympic Games for some European bureaucrats to make up." I'm afraid he's right...
E1 and E2 (Emily proposed the idea to be called QE2) planned a weekend in London. But as it is her first weekend at home too, and she owes visits with friends and family to belatedly exchange good wishes for the New Year, we decided to make it next weekend, in Paris. It's nice to know that everyone around us is healthy and cheerful, optimistic for 2011, and all visitors to our South African homestead have made it back safely. At a time when Arab hoodlums and ghetto fucks lurk behind every bend on the road and in many airports, safe trips cannot be taken for granted anymore. I wish we'd nuke these bastards already.
I will keep myself occupied with resuming my duties as Anglochat's resident psychiatrist on AOL, unpacking the many parcels waiting under the Christmas tree (ok, it's a palm tree, actually), fake surprise as I unwrap them, and call people to thank. I also plan some ice-skating tomorrow at Somerset House. And I am pondering whether to post a picture showing tan and tan lines, and white spots... but I might lose this blogsite's G rating in the process. Maybe I will cut or black out the bits that could cause a ruckus.
Happy New Year to some, and things you deserve to others... personally I hope that the year will be as good as 2010, I'd settle for that. And let's forget about the last decade: it was the worst since the 1940s, I think. Arabs have ruined the fun for the rest of the world for a whole decade. It's time to retaliate.
Current Music (Spotify enhanced): CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG - Heaven Can Wait
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