Getting a bit snotty

This has not been an amazing weekend, due to the arrival on Friday of a cold. Not 'flu, I know the difference, and I'm not going to do that usual male thing of overstating it, but a cold, with attendant coughing and spluttering, constant flow of snot leaving nostrils and septum sore, and dried crud around the fringes, inability to hear properly, and the general apathy and lethargy that such a malaise carries with it. So a large part of the time has been spent sitting or lying on the sofa, paying varying degrees of attention to the telly - Commonwealth Games, Minder (yes, Minder! and to be honest, it hasn't dated too badly), F1 (well done Renault, top show) - and scooting around looking at anything of interest here. Not a great deal come up, I have to say, but I've not been trying too hard.

Of course, the question that should be troubling all of us is 'How does Blair survive?', and you can choose Tony or Ian. Tony's travails are numerous, and folks, they all sound so familiar, don't they? They're not new things for Prime Ministers to be embroiled in, he just seems to slither through. After all, ask yourselves whether you still trust the man after the business of how we came to go to war in the first place - and we won't even get stuck into lack of proper support for forces, failings of Geoff Hoon (when I'm president, it will be Ministry of Special Duties for him), and the obvious absence of a plan for what to do with a newly conquered and de-Saddamed Iraq - and even if you do still trust him after that, you must find it increasingly difficult when you come across stories like the loans for honours debate such as at this link (although it shouldn't be a surprise in this man's case), the fact that a Labour Prime Minister is dependent on Tory support to get his legislation through, and, er, when he gets one of his dogmatic ideas he just keeps changing the reason to justify it (think ID cards, folks), it's just impossible to trust the man. So, remember to make your voices heard. And if you really can't stomach any more of Tony, there's always Ian, who despite being Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the most senior policeman in the land, appears to have some difficulties with ideas of truth and justice, although this may be symptomatic of his profession, when senior police officers have elsewhere commented on 'helping people prove their innocence'.

The recent week at work has been fun, not least because I was only there for three days, but there has been a little entertainment on the aesthetic pleasures front, with some particularly well turned out colleagues this week, and a small personal success which drew rare acknowledgment of one of my less-seen talents, so not at all bad.

There'll be more later, so if you're disappointed by the quality of this, don't be angry at me. I'll try harder next time...