I made a tentative and non-commited arrangement to meet Jamie at Out of the Bedroom tonight - he was on a drinks night out and said he might go along later on but wouldn't play. If I were to go I would play but, in the end, I decided against and thought I'd have a quiet night in.
A call from Anne's brother, Keith, changes my plans. He's bought a small MP3 player from Amazon but can't work out how to convert his CDs to MP3 or get any MP3s onto his player.
After some fruitless attempts to help him over the phone, I take my Creative Jukebox Software and drive over to his house - he's off on holiday tomorrow so time is tight.
Within an hour I'm on my way back home having loaded the software onto his PC and shown him how to use it. It works pefectly with his player and I feel good I've been able to help a friend in need.
Now I know how Craig must feel sometimes - though I realise it could become frustrating if you were to be being called on by people on the slightest computer-related pretext.
Back home I resume my surfing as Anne watches TV. At 10:30 we watch "Question Time", featuring Tony Benn, Otis Ferry, the new young blonde female Tory hope (can't remember her name), the LibDem MP who's married to weather presenter Sian Lloyd and a coloured female TV presenter from, I think, Channel Four.
It's a refreshing change to have no-one on from the Government and the discussion is lively, entertaining and thought provoking. Unfortunately for him, Otis comes a cross like an upper-class twit, while the LibDem, Tory and TV Presenter talk sense for most of the programme. Tony Benn is his usual intelligent, thoughtful self. He is the only Labour politician for whom I have any respect.
The panel agreed we are heading for a Police State here in the UK. This is something which would have been unbelievable fifteen or twenty years ago but seems now to be all too true. Where did it all go wrong - oh yes, I remember now, May 1997...when a party was elected which was interested only in power for power's sake.
Following on from the programme comes "This Week" with the strangely likeable Andrew Neil (whom I used to detest) and the unlikely double act of Michael Portillo and Diane Abbot. This is a programme I catch occasionally, and which is always entertaining. It was strange, though predictable, to see Diane Abbot's usual swingeing attacks on her own party cease completely during the recent election campaign.
A black female American playwright, currently resident in London, presented a telling report on the US-Iraq situation pointing out that, while we in the UK have much information about the US, we have little knowledge - citing the recent burblings in the press that G W Bush is in crisis over Iraq.
Turns out he's not, the American People support their Commander in Chief almost unswervingly in times of war when troops are at risk overseas, no matter the body-bag count. This made a refreshing change from the naive nonsense we see and hear time and time again in this country regarding Bush.
He is certainly in control and he is, unfortunately, not stupid at all. He has made a mistake in going into Iraq but the USA is living with this and they fully recognise they won't be able to leave for probably 10 years, possibly many more, if at all....
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