Countdowns again.
Three weeks to go to the start of the Golden Age.
I wonder if I should start stockpiling again. I got as far as a few tins of corned beef last time but those got used up quite quickly.
It would be a good idea if I were to eat less in general, what with my left knee as well as my right heel giving me pain and discouraging me from going to the gym. But I should in that case probably eat more fresh fruit and veg which is precisely what will be lacking if things go tits up.
It’s interesting to watch the various sorts of cynicism that pop up. (The picture you’re seeing is Diogenes the Cynic.) There are the people who view the idea of leaving the EU as impossible, not because it would be bad for us necessarily but because ‘they’ would never allow it. You can learn a lot about people by digging into who their ‘they’ is.
There are the people like my friend Drak, who has Boris Johnson as his MP (and I thought I was oppressed having Steve Baker!) who goes with the ‘disaster capitalist’ hypothesis: that there are people who have a lot of money riding on them being right about when Brexit will happen and how. How I feel about the savings I have invested for my future and the trust I have to put in the people managing them gets… complicated when I think about things like that.
The idea does tend to drive the feeling that we are going to leave no matter how hard we try not to.
At least Drak gets the pleasure of contemplating turfing Boris out of his constituency: they don’t deeply love him there.
And just this evening the Taoiseach is making noises about how he could see a path to an agreement… So maybe I’m wrong about the incompatibility of letting Stormont decide how long any post leaving arrangement goes on with the requirements the Irish have put forward. I still don’t see how they could get that anywhere near done and dusted by the end of the month.
And if we leave I will be so disappointed with my country.
Asleep in Room3b 
I have baked beans, 1 tin of cornerd beef, lots of Morrisons soups, coffee and cat food. I think I had best nip to Tesco and prop up another corner of capitalism. Problem – only so much room under the stairs and a refugee moves in soon (not under the stairs, you understand) and I have to make room for her bike….
You think you have little space? The six tins of corned beef I got in last time cluttered up one of the surfaces in the kitchen so much that I never went much beyond that.
I have some extra bottles of Evian but that was the result of trying to do a big order of cat litter just before Monty died: in retrospect it was a Good Thing that Sainsbury’s let me down. In theory I have a camping stove stashed in the airing cupboard (which I have never used for airing) but it was old when I inherited it from my mother, older still when I put it away and nowadays is possibly actually dangerous to use.
Where is your refugee coming from? I rather envy you having the company.
All camping stoves are dangerous to use unless you’re really quite careful with them.
I have a UPS so that the computers can shut down cleanly when the power goes off, and a lot of boardgames and books (and candles). I shall send my beard out to hunt pigeons and stray schoolchildren (avoiding, by your advice, the Wye ducks).