Friday 16th January 2009

I’m home again and things got moderately exciting when a lorry got stuck on the hill outside our house. It had to stop for someone coming the other way and then couldn’t get going again. That’s probably all the excitement we’ll get for one month, if you exclude the very sad news that someone broke into the village hall last week. If you live in the middle of a city and there is a burglary you say ‘Oh, another burglary’. If you live in a tranquil little village, where everyone knows everyone and there is a crime, it becomes the major topic of conversation because it is so unusual. It’s a horrible thing to have happen, somehow it feels like an abuse of everyone’s trust, a savage deed that wounds the whole community.

I spent some time trying to search for some good news on the internet. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of it around. However, in the sadly bizarre category I did find that a Ukranian girl who is getting married in England is advertising for wedding guests to sit on her side and be her quests at the reception. For most people, small numbers would mean lower cost and less organisation, but instead she is looking for thirty people so that the groom doesn’t steal the show. There are also places available to be a bridesmaid if the thought of being a bridesmaid is more important to you than the fact you’ve never met the bride and when you look at the photos in a year, never mind twenty years, you won’t know the names of anyone around you. I can’t help thinking that humans are strange creatures. There seems to be no mention of inviting dogs, which seems a little remiss all things considered.