Daylight Robbery

Nothing particularly spectacular has occurred in the last couple of days. We received IRD numbers in the post for all the kids. The kids are still getting on OK at school. Rhiannon has been moved up to a different maths group which is apparently taken by the deputy head. There are only about 10 in this group, so she ought to do very well.

We volunteered to count some "money" at the Primary on Sunday morning. They had a range of times when you could go in. I was a bit bemused that they'd need that many people but it turns out that it wasn't real money. It was in fact "BBQ Bucks", tokens used at various school functions throughout the year. Apparently it's a dodge to get round licencing laws that prevent beer being "sold" - but you can give it away and if you get given some worthless tokens in exchange, then that's just great. Tokens are of course purchased well in advance, so uninvited guests can't turn up out of the blue and cause a nuisance. We were rewarded for our work with a pie and a bun. Freya took the largest chocolate muffin you could imagine, but sadly I had to finish it for her.

I discovered to my annoyance that Telecom broadband blocks the outgoing mail port. This makes it rather difficult to send mail to more than a few people (don't know exactly how many yet) but it's damned annoying. There is an opt out form which I wasted no time in filling in, but as yet it's not been enabled, even after rebooting the router, which apparently one needs to do.

We've exchanged another £2k, but for a paltry $2.12 which is daylight robbery. The market rate at the time was $2.19, but you get a rubbish rate for a small transfer. The rate is still better than it has been over the last few days, the Dollar rising on the back of the Dow Jones hitting 10,000 again, we suspect.

We had Wayne and Vicky round for some nosh and a few beers. The girls made a fuss of Harvey and Lyla and a good time was had by all. I was persuaded to play a few tunes, which probably wasn't a good idea as the beer was beginning to show but I got away with it - and being applauded by a one year old made it all worth while.