Bangs and Flashes

I really hope it doesn’t rain on Saturday.

Tonight I nipped over to Sainsburys after I got home from work to pick up the fireworks for Bonfire Night. I ended up spending rather a lot. It’s probably a good thing that my sister is out of the country for the party as I’m sure that that fact would provide a damning insight into my psyche.

Nevertheless, I’ve got what looks like a good amount of bangs and flashes – the rockets only just fitted in the boot of the car! I’m hoping they live up to expectations, but at the same time I’m nervous of having a wardrobe so full of gunpowder. I’m getting flashbacks of the advice from twenty years ago about metal boxes, arms length and electric torches. Need to do some revision of the Firework Code, I think.

Other than that, there’s not much happening in my life. Work has been going well so far. Monday was hectic, but I’m getting better at delegating so most of the reactive stuff was down to somebody else while I monitored and got on with my own to-do list. Today was a bit frustrating, in that the system I’m configuring at the moment isn’t behaving as expected, but otherwise quite smooth.

Chorus rehearsal last night was also productive – although it was a sectional rehearsal and, yet again(!), the basses and baritones were sent down to the dingy airless basement room. Not happy.

In the news David Blunkett is hanging onto his job for grim death when he should certainly have resigned already. How many cock-ups can the man generate before he finally does the honourable thing?

Then there was President Bush. I saw the CNN coverage of a speech he made today about an initiative to combat avian flu. While it’s certainly a good and worthy idea, seeing it televised and headlined like that I was half expecting him to declare the start of the Global War on Flu. (At least he’d have a reasonable chance of winning that one…) I suppose with his approval rating at an all-time low and with all the recent knocks he’s taken, he’s trying to make hay out of any positive thing he can announce at the moment.