The Case Of The Missing £11 Million Gem

Of all the stories thrown up by the recession, none has been quite as bizarre as the failure of Wrekin Construction who apparently window dressed their last set of accounts with a ruby purported to be worth £11 million. The "Gem of Tanzania" was exchanged for shares but it now seems that the the gem had previously been in another group company's accounts with a value of £300,000. What's another £10,700,000 in the current climate? Sadly, although you have to laugh at the creativity involved and the fact that Wrekin managed to trade on the strength of their accounts for another twelve months, almost 500 people are now out of work so it's not really a laughing matter. Marion has gone to have her hair done so I've been furtively going through her jewellery to see if I can find anything to bolster Instanta. Just found some nice diamond earrings. Got to be a couple of million don't you reckon? That should keep Barclays happy for another twelve months.



After putting all the bird food out yesterday I can see a load of jackdaws circling and reminding me why we stopped putting the food out last year. There are six in the tree at the end of the garden and we haven't seen any for ages. It says robin food on the bag not bloody jackdaw food. Can't they read! Feeding the birds demonstrated perfectly that I am not cut out for manual work. Without exaggeration it took me almost two hours to put a bird feeder back together after filling it. Every time I screwed the top screw tight, the bottom wing nut fell off leaving me covered in seed. It did prove that I am very patient though. Marion thinks I was doing it to avoid some digging that she ended up doing.



Haven't been in touch with Instanta today yet although there are a few parcels due from eBay that I want to collect. I have bought some nice stuff recently but wonder when I will get the chance to sell it. I need to keep in touch with work to check the overdraft as ,since we got that interest rate collar, we are having to find £2,700 per month that wasn't in the budget and with interest rates at 0.5% this will continue for quite some time yet. We've found it for about six months so far but it's a penalty we could do without. No doubt when the Bank of England cut interest rates they forgot about businesses with these punitive deals (our rate goes up as bank rate goes down. It's called a hedge or a collar. I call it a noose). I am sure that we wont be the only ones to be celebrating when interest rates go back up. Mind you by then our collar deal will probably have expired and we'll end up losing out anyway.

One of the most popular videos on YouTube this week has been this one of a kid riding a giant python. It's been viewed over 1 million times and you can check it out here.


Maybe the kid's parents may think twice if they get to see the following photo.



It appears that Australian Patty Buntine couldn't find her faithful terrier Bundi when it was time for his breakfast. Where's Bundi? Can you spot him? Seems that instead of coming for breakfast, Bundi was breakfast. And speaking of breakfast I'm off to pick up Marion from the hairdressers now and go for some bacon and eggs. Real ones not one of those Wii breakfasts. And as there's nothing on at Vue for Orange Wednesday this week perhaps we'll watch a film at home. Forrest Gump perhaps?