VOTE LABOUR GET BETRAYED

It's a sad fact of political life but the Labour Party will always betray the hopes invested in it.So do the Tories  Mass parties always boil down the hopes invested in them  to offer a broad alternative  but  the Tory task  of shifting  balances and money from the many to the few,from the poor to the rich is easier than and their public relations in excusing their failures better than Labour's Building a new world and transferring money and power down to the people is more difficult both to do and to explain.Particularly to a conservative easily frightened nation

More  and more diverse hopes are concentrated on Labour : advance women, boost trade unions,remedy social problems,improve education and health ,eliminate poverty save manufacturing tax the rich support other ethnic groups save the environment and aid the poorest of the poor outside Britain. Not only will fulfilment be slow and patchy but gains one front can conflict with the interests of another and there is certainly no overall majority for all of it.If there were Labour would have been in power forever.

So a Labour government is going to betray some of jt, fail on other aspects and have more difficulty in keeping the public with it than the simple policy of the Tory Party  of helping a powerful few who already have a lot so a marginal; bit more or less doesnt matter and in an y case are better at dressing up their interest as the national interest because they control the media and the organs of communication and are much better at advancing their demands covertly

It follows therefore that Labour must dilute its demands and broaden its appeal to win power and that once in office it will be dealt with more harshly if it makes mistakes or seems to betray any part of its mission. It must give to the many not the few, a more obvious process and will receive less gratitude in return.

All of which means that a Labour government finds it more difficult to survived than the Tories and  more cunning in their offers at election time. This doesn't mean abandoning it altogether and accepting Tory priorities as we did in 2015 it means offering the mass of its supporters a broad promise of better prospects and a better economic deal and above all holding out hope which our collection of little changes failed to do.  

The Tories are free to lie  Several of  their election promises have already been abandoned. We're not. But  a living wage, more public housing for rent  are far better than attacks on the nasty tories or long explanations of why austerity doesn't work or grovelling before "business".Nor is it any use hoping that we can be led from the left;that will only be used  by our enemies to frighten people and  its too late now to revived pst policies at which we've already failed

Just use common sense.Don't frighten our easily scared electorate or select a leader who the media will use to create fear and dismay in inverse ratio to the enthusiasm he creates among the left but do offer them, hope.Most people know that they've been better off under Labour governments; more employment, rising wages, better welfare education and health. They've enough sense to realise that the Tories have made all that worse. But they do want to believe that we've got plans and are competent to do it again They didn't get that in 2015.  

Back in Rude Health

Monday 15 June

RETURNING HEALTH

It must be because we set off early an d walk to Kelly's where two of the old gang sit ruminating  and Bob gives us a lift back hpome. Yesterday we found three plastic boxes of miscellaneous discards in Claude's garage. Pls a bike which will do for Arch to get about on when he arrives. The boxes seem to be mainly old clothing but I also found a weird camera-an Olympus built like a batmobile ,very heavy and what's worse a film camera. Susan had promised faithfully that she's bring it back two years ago but then of corse she didn't. So we set out to get some film for it-preferably black and white. First effort is Cost co.No they don't sell or use film. Then Best Buy-oh that's obsolete the smart alec kid assures me. Ten years ago they were perfectly happy to sell me expensive cameras to take film.Now they've made them all obsolete. by cutting off supplies of film. Worse because the specialised photography shops have all closed. Jim's Campus Camera {where I got the damn thing in the first place} is shut.What happened to the nerdy lad who knew all about photography? He'll probably be no use on computers so there's no job as a hovering nerd in the Apple shop. Ditto mobile phones.

Anyway I do eventually find film [but colour not the black and white I wanted}  at Rite Aid which still stocks twentieth century goods.

I did least lest get two books in CostCo What on eath are we going to do with them all.?

Tuesday Manage to escape another route march to the coffee bar. One's enough. I want a holiday not an outward bound course but how long will I be allowed to dodge the column. Good weather has returned. Pouring down on the east coat, dry as dust here in the west.

Steady stream of declarations. Sunday Clinton announces her candidature with a nicely populist touch. Monday Jeb Bush,apparently the one with a brain. Today Trump which is the equivalent of John Prescott announcing he's standing for the Tory Party. There's been 106 presidential candidates since 1980 and he's the most unpopular- followed by Pat Buchanan. But he announces that he's paying for his own campaign.There'll be lots more lunatics to come  TV divided on whether there are now 12 or 15 republican candidates.

Wednesday

Early morning walk but not far. Town is fairly empty and changes character with the weather. Millions of dollars of expensive housing lie around unused changing from glamorous sun lit palaces to mysterious shacks-Today it's shacks because there's a sea fret and no clear visibility. Beach largely empty apart from as few fat ladies jogging [very slowly] no men jogging but some walking dogs-up to flur-and one small child venturing into the waves. Some houses have got the bunting up for July fourth Most haven't.Evidently the town is packed for that but our stay will  come to an end by then.. No sign of Arch who hasn't yet got his visa. Susan says she'll depart next Tuesday but she doesn't fulfill her promises. Will she bring some film Bets even

Not much news from Pomerania. No obvious leader. Not enough {or any] people of stature. Party still fighting the election we've just lost and junking the tougher parts of Milibandism or in some cases all of it to pose as pro business pro EUpro aspiration [not aspirates] and not pro proletariat whose ignoble desires for growth jobs and basnefits cant be granted least it spoil them. Trouble is we're assuming that the next election will be fought on today's grounds with recovery carrying on. More probably it will be even clearer by then that the Euro can't be made to work,that EU is an expensive drag,that British business is losing out in it, that manufacturing isn't going to recover without state help and that British capitalism can't compete but only leach on the state squeeze the consumer and cheat in any way it's allowed.. What price then a Labour still set out to be nice to business ? We should think ahead but in the panic of defeat we're only thinking backward. Tory policies aren't going to work so denounce them now.

Ed Balls off to an unpaid job at Harvard Kennedy school of government. David Blunkett to be boss of David Ross's Grimsby academies.

Sent from my iPad

I have recovered!

Great fun over Republican nominations for president.Must now be a score,all fairly unsuitable some positively undesirable with Bush hovering in the bushes.Twenty candidates on policy.Too many to fit in a FoxTV studio so they've decided to establish two tiers-mad and half mad. The most amazing tbing is the way the republicans just don't give up .They''re still trying to kill Obama care so its implementation is patchy and its penetration less than expected. On abortion various states are trying to cripple provision in various ways Texas by demanding the full surgical provision of a major hospital so that clinics which cant afford it {most} are having to closed elsewhere by demanding great numbers of referrals, warning lectures or twenty week limitations.Haviing ruled it legal the supreme court seems unwilling to rule that what's legal should be provided . It's a kind of reverse Eugenics;. The well off can afford posh clinics.The poor cant get abortions. So they breed and because they're more numerous more have to be kept in prison to protect the wilting middle class. Fuck Fuck Ye lower middle classes.and rescue the race.If you're going to have a successful abortion policy you'd have to ban them for the middle classes but offer them free to anyone whose likely to breed potential criminals

Friday 12 June Claude Loveable and Roly come to dinner, cooked on the gas fired mighty Wurlitzer which I'm incapable of handling..Americans don't have the over elaborate dinner parties North London hosts {{thank God} but more rough and ready barbequeue affairs .Casual dress Casual food. With Barbeque sauce

Saturday 13 June Dinner at Claude's with Loveable  Place is festooned with photos of Claude at various ages. No Roly today

Sunday 14 June Full recovery. Lunch in Cambria an up market more settled place than Cayucos which was bush forty years ago and now had luxurious houses but no beach.Oldies don't need one. Then back and by accident watch PM's QTs something I always hated when I could go but found fascinating now I can't.Lots of new faces asking the same old questions [incompetently in the case of the woman who beat Balls} plus the usual idiots, creeps and pillocks with Cameron a master of the situation. He really is good at PM's QT largely I suppose cos he's so good at PR and doesn't have any principles of his own so there's nothing to stop him giving the answers they want.This is his greatest hour. It can only be downhill  from here on in but in his pomp he's brilliant and perfectly suited to PMsQT if not to PM's job

Only one mention of the "long term economic plan" [which got a derisory cheer] but mostly the same old distributed questions all of which were brushed aside though more considered and genuine point got s seri0us answer which probably won't lead anywhere.Only consolation from watching is that if I'd been able I wouldn't have gone there. but miss it now I can't. The game is fun for those taking part,no much good to watch and produces a feeling of let's have another beer.

Dinner at Duckies.More clam chowder Completion of works on the pier dated for 15 June but also for August. We'll not see it. Linda threatens new walking regime tomorrow.. Beginning to think I could love vegetating here. 

Sick Parrots in Paradise

Here we are in the most beautiful little resort in wonderful California,hot sun,blue sky lovely beach. Lots of little houses made of ticky tacky and we're both proper poorly. Some kind of lung infection caught on Icelandair or on the Amtrak as a punishment for not travelling first class.It has me coughing, stops me sleeping and forces me to trainer ma vie a longeur. Linda much the same. It's a crime to be like this in paradise but every day I think I'll be better and everyday I'm not.

So we don't go anywhere though there's lots of places to go.We shop but don't buy anything. Eat but don't enjoy and lie around unable to sleep. We've eaten out once: Duckieslived on sandwiches and wondered about going home to be miserable there. More cheaply. Not the spirit that built California into paradise. Remember the kind gentle Indian tribes who lived here before the Spanish came died off when they did. Perhaps they left this legacy of disease.

Evening to Kirk and Sally for dinner. They've bought a new, huge RV which now blocks their drive.35 years old but with a new engine.Cost $6500.What on earth are they going to do with it? Drive round California they say {blocking the roads} There's a movie there Like Convoy of an RV Rebellion as angry RVs blockade the streets bring everywhere to a halt and drive the government into exile. More powerful than the Tea party. Perhaps like animal farm the leaders can turn into BMWs when they've won.

Monday The misery of slow recovery. Like the British economy..Manage a short walk on the beach and a visit to town to buy some books {having read all I've brought] and lunch at Mo's but too weary to do more. Come back and succumb

Tuesday Recovery continues. Slowly. E mail from Alistair Campbell saying they only want a few Labour people at Charles Kennedy's funeral and I'm one. But ca"nt make it. Sad cos Charles was an original and we'll not see his like again..Critch Mitch and Titch were a great team now there's only me left.Charles asked me to deputise for him at Critchley's funeral so I ask Alastair to deputise for me. Charles's dad played the bagpipes at his wedding. Now Alastair will have to do it at Charles's. funeral.

One week and two days of our holiday wasted through sickness.Which isn't over yet.

We are not well, but watching MSNBC

Bad luck's begun, Instead of bouncing with health after walks and glowing with tan from the sun, the sun's gone in, it has actually rained [briefly and softly] and we're both proper poorly with colds and sore throats, cough cough cough and flowing with phlegm. Appropriately the sun has gone and with it the good weather as we decline too tired to get up early and walk, too sick to go out. The most we attempt is a brief visit to Slo  nominally to the farmers market but we get too weary even to stay for that, go to MO's  and then home to watch TV in my case. Slo is a lovely little university town.. I'll bet it will be great for Arch but wonder if its too small for sophisticated Maze. American students seem so much younger.Small towns are the joy of Saturday Evening Post America but for oldies like me who live in the past anyway. Young people prefer big cities and Maze will be coming from Leeds with half a million to Slo with 50,000. Sally says all the gorgeous female students are known as Polydollies.

Have found MSNBC at last. It's a delight.Politics all day and good hard hitting programmes -hard hitting the republicans that is. A brilliant antidote to Fox and much better but I'm not sure whether it gets a bigger audience. With CSpan covering congress and conferences you can watch politics all day and be fully informed-something you cant do in Britain even if you take Radio 4 intravenously.Trouble is minor things get blown up into sensations there's constant hype and on a dull day everything gets done to death.

Still as we move towards the presidential campaign things are happening. Hastert the former speaker of the House [who greeted the BAPG and gave a lunch for us] a big cheery coach type bloke {sport coach not built like a bus} has been blackmailed for some sexual offence when he was a teacher, the leaders of both houses  of the New York congress have been turned out for corruption and candidates are rushing forward-looks like 15 Presidential candidates for the Republicans.

Today the former governor of Texas Rick Perry declared in an amazing rant every word of which was cheered as uttered by a small crowd while Perry was flanked by two heavies who scowled at the crowd like  a mafia guard unshook amidst a bursting world. The speech covered tasking his Dad to Omaha beach, support for our brave boys, realising the American dream [watching pornography in a cadilllac parked in the double garage of a house on Malibu beach} and lashings of jobs and growth. On the other side Chafee of Rhode Island a Democrat governor but also former republican senator and independent too gave a mild little lefty lecture against Hillary and Hillary herself denounced Republican efforts to reduce voting rights..The election is not until November 2016

The longest day

Seattle to San Luis Obispo

Shake rattle and Amtrack  After less than an hour in her upper bunk Linda got claustrophobic and I was wakened by her feet in my mouth as she climbed head to toe into my bunk which was already overcrowded enough by fat me.McD murdered sleep but the train rattled on. Stopped at Sacramento in the dark  and as day dawned we were in California: the golden state turned brown by water shortage. No rain [they're all waiting for El Nino and the richest farmers having dug the deepest wells have lowered the water table so the poorer farmers cant get any and the 20% of water needed for domestic usage is rationed. Takes a lot of bottles of imported Perrier to fill a swimming pool. Why not build an acquaduct down from Canada? Call it Canada wet.

Amtrack is manned by trainees. Nice lads and super willing to serve but capable of getting every order wrong.Linda asks for salmon and gets chicken. I asked for water and got Canada dry. All a bit like Faulty Trains. But not called Manuel and willing and enthusiastic despite the fact that they're on at 5-30am until 11 pm.

Chug on down the central valley [really is a valley with ranges on either side]train blowing its whistle every hundred yards though there's no one around to hear until suddenly we're in Pasa Robles {not recognising it} and coming down from the hills to Slo where Kirk Wilson  ever dependable turns up to meet us and drive us out to the airport to collect a car,which when Linda tells them that our Grandson is coming to CalPoly is upgraded {free} to a Mustang.

Cayucos is lovely, sunny bright dazzling,as is our house on 16th st newly pained glaring white and so unused the price is still on the crockery [bargains from TJMax.]

MONDAY 1 June dragged for a walk on the beach at 7. This is Linda's new regime. It won't last and the walk doesn't either.More dogs than people on the beach but the new fashion appears to be for bigger and hairier dogs just as the cars have got bigger. aas the price of gas has come down. Dog food must be cheaper too Turn back before we reach town fort as fattening breakfast then drive down to the front-not much changed but a lot of bright paint since we were last here two years ago. Kelly's where the old blokes all met for coffee each morning has closed-tax or sex problems no one knows and the two pretentious up market restaurants [Cass House and Hoppe} have gone bust and the pier is under repair so no access {it looks shorter to me}

Visit Irish hills plaza for food and TJ Max but can't find any braces-my belt doesn't hold my trousers up. Then town to bookshop where there don't appear to be any new and exciting books in the last two years so I'll be reduced to reading more of Nigel Lawson's egocentric biography [summed up by the cover photo which shows Nigel obviously wanting to tell the photographer he's got it wrong]

Lovely to think of Arch growing up here when he comes to Cal Poly. Small university towns are the joy of US I'd have loved it to have got a job in one when I was an academic and grown old as a thin grey Liberal 

Kirk and Sally come for dinner and Linda kindly lets him cook it at six. Their kids are all doing well and their house steadily appreciating in value. But they haven't been able to install the hot tub they promised themselves when the kids had flown. Neighbours can object 

Sleepless night because the news of Charles Kennedy's death arrives.  Awful shock. Poor,poor Charles. Everything went wrong towards the end but it had all begun so wonderfully brought back from the US at 23 to win the seat in the SDP surge [when I spoke there they all asked "how's our Charles?] and so wise[but not informed] beyond his years  and instinctively right on the issues-except EU which I put down to Scottishness- I couldn't understand it. We worked together well in the Critch Mitch and Titch days . Now there's only one of the three stooges left..stoogiest.

TUESDAY 2 JUNE . DOWNDAY ALL DAY

Gloom about Charles, lack of sleep,and sore throats [cough cough] make for a day to be missed. Sleepy morning. Dragged out in the afternoon for what's supposed to be a daily walk along the deserted beach where the only activity is half a dozen wind surfers trying to hold back recalcitrant flying dogs pulling them out to sea. All frozen to death because the wind is so cold. At this rate we'll end up more dead than fit with visions of being dragged to hospital like last time and pronounced to have double pneumonia {therefore double fees}. Quelle terrible fate. To come to paradise and  catch rigor mortis

Paradise by the way is very quiet.Only the old folks who live here year round . The cool seekers haven't yet come down from Fresno or up from Bakersfield. Perhaps they've left their dogs to guard the houses because there's more dogs 'ner folk around.

Wednesday 3 June SECOND DOWN DAY We've both got colds,sore throats and with me a chorus of burping de profundis. Shake it off enough in the morning to go down to what used to be Kelly's. Kelly herself has fled the coop and lives in Morro drug dependant they say. The father has the kids. No one knows where she is though one man says she always texts him at 5 in the morning.The restaurant next door has taken it over and kept the prices the same -and the decor which is tatty.Like the coffee.Three of the old gang are there-correction four because Gaylen the one Democrat comes in. Harvey 83 is still asking the same questions-did I know Douglas Bader=next will be did I go to the Farnborough air show.Bob the ex fireman still selling motor bikes and parts on e bay  Nothing much has changed they say stretching their minds back over two years of the history of Cayucos .One antique shop closed-the chemist moved cos the rent went up  old Bob the pot grower dead and gone. That's it. Hoe is it being retired [as they all are} you'll be on a fast political pension {they all are here} etc

Back to house to spend the rest of the day burping and spitting but not eating. Linda takes to her bed and wandering across the TV channels I stumble on PM's QT.Very odd. Here the sun hot beaming down the air clear warm bright there the claustrophobic chamber, same old faces asking the same old questions. Labour's still trying to fight the last election. Harriet with good questions none of which are answered until Cameron impales her on his zinger  {sexy image that}} does she support lowering the benefit cap. In the end she was running out of questions and falling back on what's he going to do now he doesn't have the Libs to blame.

Then it's over to the mob. Cam is brilliant as usual at not answering greeting his own side with "I absolutely agree" the rest with a knee to the balls. New member for York tried a party hand out and gets knocked back. Melanie is trying to get in {blue dress-third row}but failing because the questions go mainly to trusties.I don't recognise a lot of them but that's not unusual.I didn't in the old house either.It was as awful as usual another festival of custard pie throwing but I( wished I was there which has never happened before and shouldn't really because what was daft then remains daft now. I suppose the feeling of missing something is mainly because of the thought that Ive wasted my opportunities and now can't ever go there again to ask irrelevant questions  and get humiliated for them.Oh not to be in England now the Tories are back. Problem is they can do what they want but what they want is daft. They shouldn't embark on their big new programme of cuts now the economy is fragile and they'll slash demand. Osborne could quietly postpone them. But I bet he won't because they're not necessary economicslly but part of his programme of slashing the state.

Back to the real world via Iceland

Wednesday 27 May Departure day. By train to Manchester airport.Never want to go from London again. First class (must get out of that habit) on a crowded train of motley Icelandics backpacked lunatics and daft kids looking for the sun.Which isn't in Manchester

It's much the best airport and grown enormously since I first landed there back from honeymoon in 1959 with only three and six left. Just enough to pay for the airport bus.

Enormous queue for Icelandic air which is now the cheapest way to get to US via a short stop over in Reykjavik (which means dressing for winter It's now a shop till U drop airport ( provided U want Armani or Rotary or any other up market gear and not a bacon sandwich to stock up your stomach for an airline which now charges a Kroner a crumb)

Buy two books of enormous size which makes my carry on bag too heavy to carry on. Stagger the 4 miles to gate 31. (Inevitably the last) and get on last  to find every overhead locker pack with wheels-bins.travel trunks and enormous rucksacks (probably designed to smuggle children on for free. To find I'm on an aisle seat next to two men on diuretics who keep signaling graphically that they want to go to the toilet. Which is free. The only thing that is. 

Oh to be an MP again. I'd forgotten the joys of economy.At least it brings you closer to the people. 

Arrived at Keflavik the airport that's always building but not building travelators, so the first 100 miles of every working holiday have to be done to get out of the airport. Met by Einar driving his mother's car which hasn't been on the road for a year. He takes us back via Keflavik, built for the Americans with accommodation much bigger than then Icelandic standard but now occupied by the University. He says it's a pop music town with the museum of rock and roll because the kids formed groups for the Americans.

Daft that the Americans pressured Britain to prolong the cod war because they feared for their base then they evacuated the base when the Cold War cooled.

Takes us to Ogmundur's house. Former minister of the interior until the left was thrown out to beg in the progressives and the Independent party as a conservative coalition They're now unpopular because their austerity policies but support is t returning to the left.The most active opposition is the Pirates ( is their manifesto arson rape and small doses of murder?) who've just been holding a mass demonstration outside Parliament like the ones that broke the Independent government. 

There we gather  with his brother Bjorn the publisher ( who wants a book on the cod wars) who entertained us in the last parliamentary visit. All lefties and very interested in why Labour lost (remind me ,why'd did we?) and the difficulties of the left. Mainly gloomy and I'm buggered.But sleep well despite the fact that it's light all night.

THURSDAY 28 May  Breakfast of Icelandic Goo.Delicious Then off with Einar shopping Mainly Linda though bought a book and some little paintings- they get smaller as they get more expensive-and a museum visit plus a delicious lunch of traditional fish dishes a restaurant Einar plugged in his book. It seems to have two menus.One for the natives (of whom there are a lot) and one of illegal foods for the Japanese who're allowed whale and cormorant.

After which drive down to the harbour to see the latest arrival: a mobile fish and chip shop,Union Jack flying for "British tradition Icelandic quality." Or was it the other way round. They graciously give us six chips for being British.

Then the long drive through miles of moonscape which turns out to be a volcanic eruption in settlement times,to the airport .Why the hell is it so far out of town? There Einar's car breaks down and finally refuses to start at all jamming the car park entry (which we were lucky to reach-I'd begun to visualise lugging the suitcases across the tundra- It  refuses to move so we push the  suitcases into departures in the course of which the rigorous security checks involving removal of shoes and belts cause my trousers to fall down. No one laughs. Brilliant day. Now off to Seattle wondering if Einar will have got his mothers car going before we return in a month's time.Perhaps he'll have to bring her out to repair it-she's only 93.

Great visit. Great country but it's all collapsing in on Rekyavik  which. It has over half the population.now lives there as it sprawls The sons of the sagas have become  suburbanites living a Modern life of supermarkets,car ownership and brand shopping that the rest of us live in.Iceland is becoming like anywhere. Except that the sea's too cold to bathe in and the scenery's spectacular. How are they going to keep them down on the fa rm after they've seen Reykyavik.Indeed they can't get people to man the fishing boats and farmers can't keep a fishing. boat as a small sideline because the big owners now own them all.. Thirty per cent have degrees but I'll bet only thirty percent of them can do anything with it. Vaut le visite!,

Out by Icelandair which has the cleanest toilets in the world but infuriates by selling its food (big baguette 5 Euros steaming hot. Now over Canada. Miles and miles of fuck all as denis Thatcher once remarked.

WELCOME TO AMERICA :NOT.

Immigration looked bad at Seattle and got worse. Big lines along fenced in paths leading to great new innovation: machines to read our visas. When we finally reached one (while the immigration cops at their desks watched bored with nothing to do it accepted my passport at only the third pass but balked Linda's and just packed up. Puzzlement so eventually we were pulled over to a bored officer. Again he got mine but balked at Linda's so we were shepherded to a detention room to sit and watch officers looking at bigger screens muttering. By this time all our fellow passengers had gone. 

Shuttles into back room and hushed conversations from which Linda heard "been refused entry" It turned out that in 2004 she'd got an ester but too late to lose it so it had been revoked and another issued. In their bureaucratic terms that was a refusal but she didn't know that ( who would unless they're told) so on her latest application she' said she'd never been refused entry and had therefore lied.an officer might have coped but the machine couldn't and these guys couldn't either. It was a matter of discretion and these guys didn't have any.

They patiently explained the problem but couldn't decide what to do.Official America is very bureaucratic. But they wanted to go home. We couldn't be sent back so eventually they let us in to an empty baggage hall ( where ours were the only two cases left warning us that the same thing would happen again if we came back to US. No point in arguing. No point in loosing one's temper or pointing out how daft it was.No status to pull any longer. Just age and that did no good.

We struggled exhausted to the light rail.Thank God we didn't get a taxi. Seattle was hundreds of miles away. Taxi to hotel or rather mausoleum out for beer (Americans don't understand larger and lime) then bed buggered.

Friday  30 May Out for brekkie so then fish market where fish stalls have given way to flowers (fleury du mal at $2 a stem ) and no one's buying fish but hundreds are photographing them( a shame because most of their heads have been cut off so they're not at their loveliest) Locals stride purposefully. Visitors waddle-I lumber) while Linda looks vainly for a T Mobile shop in a tatty area where you only find flower and knickknack shops. Back to hotel to rest until we find enough energy for lunch and resuming the restless search for T Mobile. Can't ring them up to ask where they are until we find them to make our phones work. Beginning to find Seattle uncharming

Buggered. But not missing the Queen's speech just feeling happy not to be there running round in small speeches, attacking the Tories and railing at the follies.It all looks such a waste of time from here.Our daft electorate deserves all that's coming to it.