Trouser Accidents

We spent the weekend in Devon. We didn't do anything special, but it was quite relaxed and I think everyone had a good time. Dumpy had a couple of trouser accidents, but he managed to drop a turd into the big boys' lavatory, which made his grandma very proud indeed. He's going swimming today.

I don't know whether things have changed drastically since I was in full time eduction, but jelly wrestling in bikinis was never an event on the agenda at Reading University while I was there. Click!. No comment is required from me.

I'm officially going to have a go at making eggs benedict this coming weekend. In fact we have several things pencilled in for the weekend. The dragon wants to paint the kitchen. Now that the tiling is finished, she's all ready to complete the job. She likes decorating. The grass will need cutting as well. My mother wants to come down and see the finished kitchen the following weekend I think. We need to buy paint and stuff.

There is an excellent article in the Spectator, by Danial Hanan, about Europe. It's dated 18 Jun, but I only read it this morning. For those of you who can't be bothered to wade through it all, it makes a prediction about what will happen to the Lisbon Treaty now the Irish have rejected it. Hanan claims the Irish 'No' vote will be ignored and the treaty will be levered in surreptitiously anyway. Most people are expecting the Irish to run a second referendum. But Europe can't keep making people vote again every time they get a 'No', while accepting a 'Yes' immediately. Actually, it's not quite correct to say that they accept 'Yes' votes immediately, because they have never actually had one as far as I remember. The part of the article that amused me most was the collection of quotes from Euro leaders. Here are a few of my favourites:

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Euro-Greens, snarled: ‘It is not truly democratic that less than a million people can decide the fate of nearly half a billion Europeans.’ Spot on, Danny. So how about letting the other half-billion have referendums, too?

The Vice-President of the Commission, Margot Wallström, plans to run some Eurobarometer opinion polls to find out what the Irish were really voting against. Let me help you with that one, Margot: they were voting against the Lisbon Treaty. The giveaway was the ballot paper, which asked people whether they wanted to amend the constitution so as to, you know, ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

According to the President of the European Parliament, the amiable Hans-Gert Pöttering, "The ratification process must continue,’ because ‘the reform of the European Union is important for citizens, for democracy and for transparency.’ Got that? The reason the EU is tossing aside the verdict of the Irish people is for democracy.

It should be funny. It is funny. I heard a politician on Radio 4 last week claiming that although the Irish actually "voted No mathematically", they didn't really mean it.