I watched a lot of telly last night. Firstly Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls- which wasn't very good, then a bit of a Morecambe and Wise Christmas special- which was embarrassingly bad and lastly an episode of the Swedish Wallander- which was very like the English Wallander except that Wallander was a big, clumsy bear of a man with floppy hair and there were fewer lovely landscapes- presumably because the Swedes already know what their country looks like.
We had a couple of beers for lunch. We don't drink much. We started off the season with 18 bottles and there are still 5 left. I went to throw the empties in the bin and Samina was out front valeting her car. We got into conversation. Her New Year has been taken up with burying a cousin who died of swine flu. "That's how it goes," she says, "when you have a family as large as mine."