Trying to resume normal service.

Even though today has been an excellently bright and sunny, if very frosty, day, we are still limping along, not quite recovered from the dreaded between Christmas and New Year lurgy. I got as far as the village to buy the newspaper. Phil got as far as getting out of bed, eventually. 

The frost hung around until at least mid-afternoon so it's probably just as well we stayed in and ventured nowhere. Hopefully, something like normal service will be resumed tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a few more observations on what I am reading and hearing. 

I heard Nigel Farage on the radio, or maybe one of his spokesmen, saying he could not see UKIP forming a coalition with any party. Really? Are there people anywhere who envisage one of our political parties wishing to form a collation with UKIP? Would anyone INVITE that party to work with them? My mind is totally boggled at the prospect! Am I living in a nightmare where a group of cranks who seemed like an extremely bad joke can suddenly seem like a viable proposition for government? 

Reading about women and alcohol, I came across this statement: "women born after the Second World War are twice as likely to binge drink and develop alcohol disorders than their older counterparts". Well, that's a rather weeping generalisation, in my opinion. Since the Second World War ended in 1945, this grouping includes all women aged about 68 and under. There are an awful lot of women who fall into that group. I'd like to see some proper statistics for I feel that maybe you should bring down the age at which binge drinking is most likely to be common. 

Then there's the attitude to ageing; on the radio they were talking about this. Ladies of my sort of age commented on the fact that previously "ladies" of our age did not dye their hair, dress fashionably - smartly yes, but with a certain age-related decorum - or run around doing half the things we do now. And there were a whole lot of much older people talking about what they do to counter the stereotypes of old dears. 

One chap in his mid eighties said that his reaction to being classified as "too old" is to go out on a five mile run. Hurray!