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An ongoing conversation overheard from a cubicle in John Lewis in Cambridge, between the two bright, educated young women who were in charge of the changing room, virtually verbatim:

- Like, I'm going to be away for, like, six months or more.
- Like, how do you get to, like, stay there for so long without, like, a visa?
- I, like, sign on with their social security and, like, get an ID and, like, then I can get
  a job and be, like, legal and everything.
- But, like, do you have money saved for, like, travel and everything? I mean, like,
  flights to Australia are, like, really dear.
- Like, I've worked here for, like, six months since graduating and, like, I'll stay here
  for another, like, three, and then, like, I'll have enough for a return ticket and, like,
  a few weeks in a hostel as well.

Absolutely true. I just couldn't believe it. I wanted to find another adult and repeat this conversation in front of them to see if they realised how DREADFUL it is, but I took my Whistles jeans and left. Lovely girls they were too. How did this ever happen?


Back home from Cambridge I spent the next two days in the garden moving, inter alia, a ton (literally) of bark from the drive to the flower bed. One ton just about covered it at a depth of three inches, so hopefully that'll be the end of my weed problem there. Just another ton to move to the end bed, but not today. Amazingly my shoulders and arms didn't ache afterwards. That's an awful lot of shovelling. It was a lovely weekend, sunny, hot and windy, and I got a lot done. Both evenings I finished at about 7.30pm, and was able to relax in the summerhouse with a Peroni before cooking supper. Such bliss. In the end I got my Rayburn fixed, and now my computer too. The dishwasher repair person is coming on Thursday, but I'm not that bothered. Funny how money has a habit of just wriggling out of your pocket and into someone else's. It's, like, a real bugger.