JUST back from a weekend seeing two of the adult kids well settled into their London lives, such fun, though exhausting.
And the difference in attitude to Covid between the UK and Spain was obvious on public transport. Despite all the signage from Transport for London stating that it was policy to wear masks on all trains, buses and in stations, the majority of travellers didn't bother.
Thank God we didn't travel during the rush hours. It's unnerving to be too close to unmasked strangers.
The airport was better, though it's strange to see signs asking people in observe social distancing, then getting on a plane where we're all squashed up together, even while there are empty seats on board.
The local London news was full of angry motorists queuing to fill up as panic about fuel shortages grips the land. As soon as the government says there is plenty of petrol, so no need to panic, people rush to fill up. No-one believes this government.
They keep denying any of this has been caused by Brexit, while they try to ease their own 'no Johnny foreigners here please' rules to allow in lorry drivers to fill the thousands of vacancies.
Or at least lorry drivers desperate enough to work in the UK under worse conditions than Europe and only for a three month visa before they're kicked out again on Christmas Eve.
You read accounts by British lorry drivers who talk of having to sleep in lay-bys or industrial estates with no basic facilities and have to pee into bottles. Drivers have to pay £30 a night to park in the big motorway services stations, while in Europe there is no charge for lorry parking and there are often free shower facilities for HGV drivers.
Gosh, they must be queuing up for the privilege of working in good old Blighty. And oh, could we also have a few thousand poultry workers so that we don't also have a turkey shortage.
Meanwhile our own unionist politicians have taken a look at the chaos over in GB and decided, yes, we'll have some of that, cos we are British too.
They marked Ulster Day (no, me neither) with a joint declaration to reiterate their opposition to the NI protocol. And even if it means we don't have to endure the same shortages as they're experiencing over the water, that's not good enough for them.
'We are British, so we want to suffer because of the same ineptitude as our brethren over there.' No surrender to sense.
Of course, we also have our home-grown ineptitude here. Witness the half-assed easing of Covid restrictions on social distancing in some indoor settings, including shops and cinemas.
Venues will be asked to put mitigations in place such as proof of vaccination, though this won't be a legal requirement.
Yet the Executive can't agree on going ahead with domestic vaccine passports because of some kind of "ideological reluctance" by some ministers, according to Robin Swann.
You feel his pain until you discover he voted against it himself, because a scheme hadn't been designed yet. Why not?
A similar scheme is working perfectly well across the border and there's also one for people who travel abroad. Would it really be so difficult to adapt that to suit other purposes?
This is probably why they don't have proper press conference arrangements at Stormont. They don't want reporters asking awkward questions now, do they?
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IT'S hard to get excited about Angela Rayner's use of language in her outburst about Tories as Etonian "scum". Though personally I think the word works better with "bag" attached.
It certainly isn't parliamentary discourse, but then it was secretly recorded at a meeting of Labour activists, so I imagine it got pretty hot and heavy at times.
The photo of her having a fag outside the party conference really deserved the headline "Am I bovvered?" because she looked just like that Catherine Tate character and more often than not, sounds like her too.
Starmer wore his usual constipated expression as he said it wasn't language he would use. He preferred a pithy 14,000 word essay to get across his political message.
And that's part of his problem. We don't expect him to be like his gobby deputy, but he could do with an injection of passion if he's ever going to win over voters.
If the electorate really does choose political leaders on the basis of whether they could enjoy a pint with them, then the aforementioned Etonian still has the advantage.
