An eventful day

Eventful by the standards of my quiet life anyway.

Not long ago I had a flagpole installed at the front of my house and since then I have bought various flags to fly from it to suit various occasions. The fact that my morning drive takes me past one of Brisbane's two chief flag suppliers has something to do with that.

Anyway, I decided yesterday that I would like to fly the English flag in honour of my English ancestors so I dropped in at the flag place and asked for one. A printed flag there retails for $44 so price is no big deal. They only had a sewn St George flag in stock, however, which is much dearer. So they sold me the sewn one at the wholesale price of $80. There are benefits in being a regular customer -- but being a regular customer at a flag factory is undoubtedly eccentric.

Note that I said the English flag and not the Union Jack. The Union Jack is the flag of the United Kingdom. The St George flag is the flag of England. Since devolution, flying the English flag has become popular in England, even though the lower echelons of British officialdom sometimes describe that as "racist"! Thank goodness British officialdom does not speak for all Englishmen (or even the majority of Englishmen in this case). I suppose some blighted souls would also describe the historic toast "To St George and merrie England" as racist too. Schoolkids in England have even been punished by teachers for flying the English flag!



The English flag is also often flown by Englishmen who object to the non-solution of the "West Lothian question" and I am entirely in sympathy with that protest, so I was glad to have the proud and historic red cross of St George flying over my house yesterday.

And in the afternoon, Paul came over to deliver my new UPS (uninterruptible power supply). We do have momentary interruptions of power supply here at night fairly often and there is talk of strikes from electricity unionists so I definitely need a UPS.

While he was here Paul also installed a DVD burner in my computer and installed the AVG viruschecker -- which he recommends. I have always found viruscheckers more trouble than they are worth so I hope this one turns out better.

Then in the evening Jenny had Anne and me over for a paella. There are very few restaurants in Brisbane where you can get a paella and Jenny's home-cooked paellas are as good as they come so it was much enjoyed. I took over a bottle of Veuve Cliquot to aid the deliberations and we had an excellent pavlova for dessert.

And today I have just had the termite man over. The house is under fairly heavy attack from termites at the moment so we have to do what we can to kill them. We are using Termidor this time. You never get rid of them entirely, however, so you just have to put occasional repairs down to maintenance.