Strange Times

In the words of the esteemed thinker and philosopher Bradley Daniel, in some ways being a little baby has been the right place to be the last 2 months, as, if nothing else, it has spared Amelie from the hysteria that seems to have gripped the world since the start of September. I agree with his sentiment wholeheartedly. Not in my lifetime have I observed a time when journalists have been able to use so many long adjectives from their thesaurus. Markets are always "in turmoil" shares "crash", credit "crunches" and selling is "frenzied". Or to put it more prosaically, the stock market is back to where it was when labour came in 11 years ago - but that isn't very exciting so noone says that.

What is undeniable is that we are heading into a world recession. What is amusing is that leading politicians have been announcing the fact this week as if its a revelation - whereas its about as revelatory to most people as announcing that Sarah Palin is weak on foreign policy ( she might struggle to spell foreign policy in fact).

On the whole I am fairly sanguine about the whole thing. On the plus side my decision not to buy a house last year looks better every month. So does not putting the cash that would have been the deposit in an Icelandic bank. On the minus side that was because I put it in the stock market instead. On the plus side I invested widely ( balanced portfolio blah blah) on the down side every sector - and I mean every sector you can think of - is in the toilet presently. Still its not so bad, I don't need the money for a house deposit any time soon for obvious reasons (I am not certifiably insane for example) and I suspect that anyone who holds their nerve now will be amply rewarded in 3 years time. I'll go further, anyone with a chunk of cash who invests it now will be rich in 3 years- you read it here first.

Of course the other reason for being upbeat is that the our Gordon is an Economic superhero -the saviour of the world economy - man of the moment - thank god we have him to correct the problems caused by that hapless idiot who was Chancellor for the last decade - what was his name? Scottish guy...bit dour..

PS Keep praying that McCain doesn't win - I hear he's been "palin around" with an Alaskan Governor...(if you haven't followed the coverage that joke will not mean too much to you unfortunately..). He should have stuck to oven chips..

Peace In Our Time....

Its been a long six weeks since my last blog, which is surprising given how little has been going on. As you can see amelie and matty sleep all the time and basically you would hardly know we had a second child..............if only this were true....

To be fair the last 8 weeks with Amelie have been better than the first 8 weeks with Matty, mainly because of second child syndrome. This is where you simply cannot get as manically, frantically, eye poppingly stressed about things as you did the first time round. (We had our own room at casualty in Paris) The second reason things could have been worse is that Matty has been great with his little sister - and often very funny and sweet too. Highlights include telling us off for letting her cry, putting a cushion in her moses basket for her to lie on, singing to her when she gets upset and of course giving her her soubriquet of the moment - "Baby Mimi". Lets hope it lasts...

Apart from that the last 8 weeks have been pretty par for the course for a new offspring: not enough sleep, lots of nappies and a certain amount of irascibility, but still nice to have a little daughter.. with a big bruvver to look after her!

If nothing else having to adapt to two kids not one has at least taken my mind off the global conflagration in stocks and shares, the collapse of Western civilisation, the epoch making Presidential election and - most importantly of all - the Andrew Sachs/ Russell Brand affair , but I think all that is another article.