johnny9fingers: (Default)
johnny9fingers ([personal profile] johnny9fingers) wrote2009-03-02 01:18 pm

(no subject)

Oh Well....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7918643.stm

AIG posed ' a system risk' to the global financial system.

I suppose this is why we're bailing out the banks (or in this case the financial insurance sector); not because we approve of what the bankers have done, but because we need the system stabilised.

The forward account carpetbagging of the past two decades is catching up on us all, and sinners or saints, we're all in this together.

And we have a new class of super-rich financial types who inexplicably seem to have considerably more than they did two decades ago. However a £700,000 pension ain't quite 'super-rich'. Rich, yes, but not oligarchical. It doesn't really count until you get to 8 figures.

They're asking £2.9 Million for a house half a mile away from us which looked fairly nice though not anything really special: 5 bedrooms, some original features, driveway for a car; the size of a small brownstone but on two floors rather than three or four. I opined to SWMBO that it would take us twenty years to be able to afford something like that: she replied....no, five years. Driven is as driven does. I knew she was doing well despite the downturn, after all she's very good at the obscure bits of contract law and has the reputation for being able to tie up construction contracts so no-one ever needs to touch them again unless other conditions change: but even so.
I thank the gods for my small independent means. I'll take any sop to my dignity.

Thinking about contracts, she got my name on the dotted line too.

12 days to go.

As I may have mentioned: I had a last-minute-arranged drink at Nick's. Well I had four days to arrange it but....so many folk couldn't be there I stopped 'phoning around as it was beginning to appear rude asking; most folk I know seem to need a few weeks notice; we're all so old and set in our ways. However Stephen, Aaron, Mike (the Bro'), Toby, Fra, and Steve from TPA, turned up to watch me get plastered and try to impart to Stephen any stories that might show me in even a marginally good light. Thirty years in Rock 'n' Roll and no-one could think of a single creditable story or even one which showed me off to some advantage. I must have done something right. The list of my sins was enormous and of great invention; my good points were harder to pinpoint, alas.

Beer and whisky.
Only vomited twice, and that was the morning after. SWMBO had to spend the Sunday in bed after her Hen-night. Photophobia just one of the many unfortunate symptoms made manifest by her carousing the previous evening. All day hangovers are such a drag, my dears.

Rereading Anthony Powell's 'Dance to the music of Time'. Have gotten to the War Novels, which are quite brilliant. Recommend them to anyone really: so much more sophisticated, lighter, and better than Brideshead; though I did quite like Waugh's Catholic symbolist take on the war/class/change/adultery thing in the 'Sword of Honour' trilogy.

Must get to the quack's for Madame's prescription. Go well and do good things....even if no-one ever remembers them.

[identity profile] johnny9fingers.livejournal.com 2009-03-02 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I think Pat Barker is a great writer, and Regeneration a very good book. If it suffers at all it suffers from the non-fictional aspect of her characters: which is part of the task she set herself - we know so much about the WWI war poets that some seamless intergration is difficult if we're all looking for the anomalies. She's good enough that I got beyond that very quickly; but I know it has been different for others.

It was the vomiting that pointed you there, wasn't it?

[identity profile] pastorlenny.livejournal.com 2009-03-02 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
No, it was the fact that you're a limey and you read.

[identity profile] johnny9fingers.livejournal.com 2009-03-02 05:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Last one left. Or sometimes it seems so.