Cate is doing a touch and go landing

I have included a photo of our lounge room showing the dimensions of my problem in respect of the lights. Now you can see my ladder - it is two meters high but is well short of reaching the high lights even if I stand it on a table – and even if Mrs Moneypenny sits on my shoulders.

On the weekend I tried to buy a ladder from Amazon in Germany but they would not send it to me (too big) so I will just let the high lights die one by one until they are all dead and then I will find an electrician willing to carry a ladder up six flights of stairs to replace the lights. Good luck with that.

The problem is of course that they are not normal globes – they are ‘down lights’ so have to be popped out of the fittings - and have new lights plugged into them and then re-fitted. I am telling you this in case you think that I can use a bulb changer thingy on the end of a stick – or Muffin gaffer taped to the end of a broom handle.

Now I learned yesterday that the love of my life is not in fact returning to me on Saturday from Peoria – well she is but so briefly as to barely be noticeable.

There has been one of those Goat Things in another of her places of interest so she is doing a ‘touch and go landing’ on Saturday and will arrive home at about 9:30 AM and depart for the African Continent at about 5.30 PM.

This will give me just enough time to wash and dry her undies and iron a few essential things for her - and it will give her time to catch 40 winks because she will be pretty well shagged out after a gruelling week of meetings – and because where she is now she can only get Fox and this would knock the stuffing out of any sensible person.

But - if all goes according to plan I will meet her next Wednesday in Berlin where we are having a belated birthday celebration for me.

Amazingly – we have not been to Berlin before during our time in Europe and it is somewhere we would really like to see.

Berlin is one of those places that Bomber Harris actually got to flatten completely. Every building, every stick of furniture, every piece of plumbing – he bombed it back to the stone age.

I think he was working on the basis that what the Allies would need most in Berlin after VE day would be rubble to fill in the bomb craters so that they could build car parks for the new football stadiums and Marks and Spencers stores.

So opinion is divided on whether he was actually a war criminal or a leader in urban redevelopment.

But – hey – I am told it looks fabulous now – well I mean the part that the Communists didn’t get their hands on because they were not renowned for their architectural skills – or road building skills – or indeed much at all really. 

I have chosen – I think – a really nice hotel – using a brand new formula. I am not going to tell you what it is until I see if it works.