Brighter
1 February

It's started feeling brighter already

Whilst the Eastern side of the country has been twice now blanketed in snow (much to Mary's delight), we have had a much easier time of it here in the grim North West.

Mornings I leave the house in daylight. Evenings if I leave work before five in the car I can be home and in the back garden in full twilight. I'm not sure that we shall have quite the show of daffodils that we had this time last year but things are definitely looking up.

Still it's been chill and Ross and I have continued hibernating at weekends. We caught up with some television.

We watched Empire which is a superior history series on Channel Four identifying both the good and creditable things about the British Empire as well as the less savoury aspects.

We watched Holidays in the Axis of Evil in which reporter Ben Anderson visited North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and Cuba as a tourist and tried to film in all six countries. Not surprisingly he found that the locals were very friendly and nice people but that they didn't want to talk about politics in front of the camera. He found that the first three regimes were overtly oppressive although people made the best of their circumstances and the second three were more relaxed. And he found that local people were more cynical of their leaders than the propaganda might like to portray. He also found that Iran did not like him trying to trick their officials when he was imprisoned for six days. He might have received more harsh treatment elsewhere. After all, he was travelling under false pretences.

We watched a Time Watch programme about Rameses III in which we found that the historical record as portrayed by the heiroglyphs on the sides of the tombs which told us he was a wonderful ruler were in fact a load of cobblers. He was a weak and vacillating man who was overthrown by a putsch from within his own palace.

And we watched our exceptionally cute next door neighbour Jamie having a shower. Apparently he has a younger brother. I don't think that I could cope.

As we head into this second month of the year, my Angel/Shadow cards have come up trumps again.

I had a chest X-ray on Tuesday. That was the same day as I went to the dentist to have a broken tooth repaired. Anyhow, I was having the chest X-ray because I am not happy about the way that the persistent croak in my voice has not diminished. I know that it's a little far fetched but I don't want to end up, unlike my father, with an untreated cancer in the throat. So, I'm getting it looked at. I don't think that the X-ray will show anything and that I am going to have to ask for a broncoscopy. But we will see how it goes.

So, it was good that during the week there was an element of light relief. Ross and I took ourselves off to Unity Theatre for a comedic entertainment entitled Horny Helmets put on by Guest House Theatre Company for whom my friend Robert works.