Trottems and Marmasuprial

As the kittens have matured, into attractive cats, so have we and decided that their kitten names are no longer appropriate for cat-hood. We don't really call them Trotsky and Marmite much any more. Trotsky isn't much of a revolutionary socialist. She's very friendly, with a good sense of humour but she does like trotting around which is why Trottems suits her more. Marmasuprial isn't keen on advertising and she is definitely black not brown. She likes to appear intelligent even though she probably isn't which is why a longer name suits her more. They both seem to spend 80% of the time sleeping and the rest of the time chasing flies. Marmite still wakes us up every morning by walloping us in the face or attacking our feet and the 'Catlocator' is still a discussion point for any visitors to the house, but we haven't had any new ones recently!

In addition to stroking the cats, and Primarkation treatment we've also tried the Ikea diet. Traditionally not very therapeutic, especially at the weekend, but if done on a weekday then it's not too bad, although the side effects on your bank balance can be quite disturbing. Phil's preference is electroretail therapy - although if I come too it has to be my preferred practitioner Mr John Lewis, as opposed to Dr Ebay, a bit of a con merchant with a lot of DNAing in my view. Phil is over the moon as we have now got a TV that didn't come out of a skip - it's a SONY 40 inch LCD, positioned above the computer with a central speaker so the whole set up on that wall looks like a big space android-robot. Fortunately Phil's Captain Kirk. TRotsky is Spock, Marmite is Uhura and I'm a sexy alien from the Earth's past who likes gardening and other twentieth century activities.

I'm also having acupuncture, which seemed to work brilliantly the first time - it totally got rid of the PMT side effects I was getting from some drug or other. Yesterday it was quite painful. I'm also attempting to review all the books I'm reading on Amazon, but they keep on not publishing my reviews which is a bit annoying. I need to find a place where people write 'Time-out' style reviews on day-time TV as I'm becoming such an expert on it. I find now I'm switching from Jeremy Kyle to 'To buy or not to Buy' with a couple of comedy presenters, 'Dom and Nelly'. Quincy seems to not be on anymore which is a bit of a tradgedy so now I'm watching 'Working Lunch'. I'm looking forward to the FTSE going up to 6k. And I'm not joking. Is there going to be a party? The thing that annoys me about these programmes like Classic FM and Channel Four News is that they always say what the FTSE amount is - every day - but never whether this is an increase or decrease from the previous day and how this contributes to the rate of change. Why not show a graph or say the rate of rise over the past six months? Or the financial year?

Tomorrow's Phil's 30th Birthday and he has assured me that as part of his celebrations that he wants to hold a car boot sale (yep) as I enjoyed the one I did so much. He's confident of getting a hundred quid for more rubbish we've tracked down in the house. As it's his rubbish I'm quietly more optimistic than him. His categorisation of rubbish is a lot more slack than mine. I think this is my main problem with Green economists. They (and here I'm thinking of Zac Goldsmith) essentially promote Carbon Tax - essentially an indirect tax which is much worse on the poor - those on fixed incomes. What this does, and what we're seeing is massive rises in energy costs. Unless this goes hand in hand with rises in things like the pension then people are just going to be thrust into poverty. The government could stimulate demand for recycling at the other end of the market, by improved regulation, more funds on recylcing, green transport etc by raising income tax. With the carbon tax method that Zac and the Tories seem to the think is the be all and end all, what effecxtively happens is that the rich people carry on regardless as they always have done like they always do. The rest of us, and especially the poor start eating grass as that's the only thing we can afford, and never throwing away anything. Then they start rummaging around in other people's rubbish to see what they can sell. That's what the old ladies in Hong Kong do according to Phil. The fact is capitalism just doesn't agree with being green as the two are incompatible as when we're well off we waste more.

The other news is that I'm reading 'Diary of a Nobody'. It's essential reading for bloggers. Also Phil and I didn't realise (pure ignorance) that George Grossmith (the author, with his brother Weedon) knew Gilbert and Sullivan so well, starring in their productions like The Mikado! Topsy Turvy is one of Phil's favourite films and he just got it the other day on DVD!

We haven't seen Paolo for a few days as he's got shingles. I wasn't very welcoming when Phil gave the diagnosis on Sunday. Paolo's the equivalent of Cummings and Gowings in Mr Pooter's house (Nobody).