Me: Look, look, your key role as publicist has been acknowledged.
Her: Is that the same person who said in her twitter feed that I am 9 when, in fact, I am 8?
Bespammed
My twitter account has been issuing weight loss spam. Sorry about that. I suppose it could be worse. In all my lengthy time on the internet, I have never had this kind of difficulty before. I have joined new things with gay abandon. I have given my credit card details without a second thought.
My mother on the other hand is ultra cautious. She has never joined anything on the internet. She has never given her credit card details over the internet (I know). She has never told anyone her PIN. She shreds all her personal details before binning them. Nevertheless, she has been very unlucky and regularly been the object of scams. The bank have been known to ring to check whether she is in the Bahamas spending money like water. She never is.
While I would like her luck to turn, I do hope that mine isn’t. Sigh.
Activities
We went to visit the President’s House. The children threw pebbles in his fountain.
We went to the zoo. We saw some animals but we spent most of our time in the playground. The African grasslands closed at 4.30 so we missed the lions. Alas. At €45 to get in, that’s the most expensive playground I’ve been to in a while.
Oh dear.
High Standards
Michael: What’s an ego?
Herself: Well, there’s an ego and a super ego.
My sister: A super ego?
Herself: It’s the rules of society that stop you jumping the queue or taking another person’s sandwich. A baby, for example, doesn’t have a super ego.
My sister (faintly): Oh.
On relating this to the Princess’s loving father, he said, “Oh yes, I remember explaining that to her in some context or other. It doesn’t sound like she added much to the original lesson.”
Where is my Willpower?
Sometimes I stay up late into the night surfing the internet. My almost famous connection (give it time – also, buy her book) put up a blog post about make-up wherein she said “I’ve just spent about 45 minutes watching make-up videos by Lisa Eldridge”. “Ha,” I thought to myself “well I might as well have a quick look at this before I go to bed as there is no way I would spend 45 minutes looking at a make-up video.” Bear in mind that I last bought something for my make-up bag in the 1990s. It’s not that I don’t wear make-up, it’s just that I take my sister’s free gifts from her amazingly extensive collection. But yet, I found Ms. Eldridge strangely compelling and 45 minutes later (at 3.45 am, alas), I finally tore myself away from her advice and found myself contemplating my first make up purchase since 1995.
It’s going to be a clinique airbrush; I thought you would like to know.
Literally
Those of you following Ireland’s progress will know that the banks have behaved badly. I can be lyrical on this point. I have been, in fact, to the extent that the children are dimly aware of the banks’ role in our current crisis and can’t quite understand why I insist that they leave their money there rather than letting them spend it – by far their preferred option.
We were in the car in the morning on the way to school and I was talking to Mr. Waffle about this repossession. The sheriff was defeated, at least temporarily, by the “random legal word generator”. In this case the words “constitution”, “common law”, “separation of powers” and “inviolable” were brandished to good effect. While, the arguments adduced made no legal sense whatsoever, the emotional argument that the banks had got away without any sanction did strike a chord. “Of course,” said I bitterly “the banks got away with murder.”
Michael piped up from the back seat, “WHAT, the banks murdered someone?”