The week that was was not good. Bad Week.

Tooth problems return. Three weeks of dental pain projected before something can be done.

The Con-Dems are more horrid than I thought they'd be, and I wasn't expecting much. Get rid of the EU Bill of Human Rights??? Replace it with one more suitable to the British???? So we're not human now, eh? Just which human rights aren't suitable? Freedom of speech? Banning torture?

The new broom in Number Ten sweeps on: Sell off the Post Office. Turn over the parks and libraries to the councils to run and put a freeze on council rate rises. Get those citizen volunteers in. Run them like the National Trust, the Govt. proposes. None of this has reached the stages of laws in Parliament, so perhaps this is all simply doom and gloom fear mongering.

But the weather the last couple of days has been good. I worked on the allotment this morning, digging. Came home, went to the store to pick up a few things. When I got home, my key stuck in the door. We live in a terrace house 125 years old, with many of the original features, including the front door lock. The key jammed in the door.

I spent 45 minutes trying to get it out, even went into my trunk and got some tools and tried to take the lock apart. I finally gave up and walked to Hinges and Brackets, a store a few blocks away. There were three people working in the store.

I explained the problem and a young man behind the counter said he's see what he could do. So he and I walked back to the house. He mucked about with the key, couldn't do anything. We asked a neighbor if we could go through her house to my back garden - there's a passageway, but it's locked.

We went through. I hoped I'd forgotten to lock the back door. I hadn't. We tried assorted windows and the young man found one he could open and climb through. Interesting: little dogs greeted him with great pleasure and did not offer to tear him to bits. (Scrap fond projection of little Candy's teeth buried in a serial murderer's ankle while Belle Belle hassles out of reach and I beat SM's head with a broom.)

He took the lock off, sat happily in the middle of the hall floor and took it apart. He said a lever had broken and took it back to the shop to repair. He came back thirty minutes later, put it back on and it worked. He said it might work another hundred years or it might not.

I said Let me get my checkbook...

He said, Oh no...

I came back with the check book and he said he couldn't charge me. He wasn't a locksmith, just a guy behind the counter that liked playing with locks. It was nice to get away from the shop.  I said I can tip you anyway?

Yes...

I gave him ten pounds.

Locksmiths charge around £65. an hour and he's spent an hour and a half mucking around climbing through windows.

Getting locked out was bad but not having to pay £100+ (what I expected to pay) was such an overwhelmingly relief that it balanced out on the plus side.

Perhaps I should adopt that as a way of dealing with the Con-Dems. Think of what the real crazies in the Conservative Party would like to do. Be grateful for the moderating influence of the Liberal Democrats.

Diane Abbot has decided to run for the Labour Party leader. She's about my fave Labour politician. Unfortunately, she's too female, too black and too fat to get elected. If she looked like Michele Obama, maybe she'd have a chance... but the electorate is too enamored of pretty people. Somebody said politics is acting for ugly people. We seem to have adopted filmi star standards for our politicos. A mistake.

Abbot is very direct, very pragmatic and on the left wing of the party. Labour left is a lot less pretty than Labour right. The Pod People are upon us; if not as your MP then in a constituency near your own. Pretty Pod People. Those who read science fiction during the mid twentieth century are well prepared for today's world.

We went to see Four Lions on my husband's birthday. It's about four British Pakistanis that decide to become suicide bombers in reaction to British involvement in Iraq/Afghanistan. It is, of course, controversial: can terrorist attacks, however bumbling, be the subject of satire? Well, yes, I think it was both funny and sad. The would-be terrorists gradually talk themselves into it. The ending is both predictable and inevitable but still a great shock. Some of the best acting I've seen - and no pretty people at all.