People keep saying we live in exciting times and god it's getting boring. I'm fed up of exciting times. I want politicians to be out of the spotlight and just do their job. I want the pandemic to be truly over (we're all just living our normal lives now as if it is), but it isn't. I want Putin to stop invading Ukraine and killing people for no reason whatsoever and I want the Tories out of power.
So, since we last spoke Boris Johnson resigned (then clung on to power for a few more months so that we could pay him for going on holiday all summer), then Liz Truss (yes, you heard right Lizz bloody Truss) became the new PM. (Favourite names for Truss so far are Trussolini and Margarine Thatcher). She met the Queen and the Queen died the very next day. So we now have King Charles and a whole load of new bank notes, coins and stamps to issue. Although Royal Mail (along with half of the country) are still on strike. The railways have come to a standstill today due to strike action. The cost of our gas and electric bills went up today and half of the country are worried that they won't be able to heat their homes this winter.
Add on to that the disastrous and controversial 'mini-budget' that Truss and Kwarteng announced just 8 days ago which crashed the pound and gave tax cuts to the richest people in the country and caused the markets to panic and made mortgage lenders remove hundreds of their products and the Bank of England had to step in and spend £65 billion pounds in order to protect people's pension funds from being wiped out and caused mortgage rates to rise and inflation to rise - god knows what damage they'll do with a full blown budget.
On a personal note I'm fully recovered from my bout of Covid and have no after effects. I've also just received my letter asking me to go for my Covid Booster on November 6th. Mum is staying with me at the moment. She fell and broke her hip a few weeks ago (just a few days before we were due to go and stay in a lovely holiday cottage near Ashbourne) but she's doing incredibly well. She didn't need a full replacement as it was a clean hairline fracture so they put three pins in instead and she's bounced back like a trouper. She's walking around the house unaided and just using a stick when out and about. Although we are making full use of the free wheelchair hire at ASDA and Cosmeston so that we can get further and faster.
Summer has been good apart from that. Glastonbury was wonderful and we all decided that we would go again next year. I danced my socks of at GlastonBarry - just like the good old days. And we had an amazing 7 day cruise around Norway. Finishing off summer with Equinox festival (the one that I was on my way to last year when Dad had his heart attack) and a couple of days in York. I arrived in York on the day of the Queen's funeral, so traffic was great and there were hardly any tourists down the Shambles. Back at the hotel I discovered that the funeral was on all of the main channels from 9.00am to 6.30pm. So I watched an episode of Undercover Boss USA on 4Extra and was shocked to see the following screen appear at the first ad break. It's only when you have to listen to a few minutes of silence that you realise how long ad breaks really are.
I'm ready for Autumn now and getting back into cosy days in and drawing tutorials and eating lots of lovely hearty meals. Speaking of which I'd better go and make lunch. We're having a 'healthy' cheese on toast (cheese with grated carrot, milk and mustard). Then I'm making some black-eyed bean and feta burgers for tea. And Strictly is back so Mum and I will be enjoying that with a few glasses of wine tonight.