22 January 2011 (Saturday) - Aladdin

Yesterday I complained about anti-Muslim bias in our society. Today I might run the risk of fanning the flames of that bias, but a small minority of Muslims do very little (if anything) to help themselves. Take today’s news in which a young Muslim lady (one of the stars of the Harry Potter films) found herself fearing for her life. She was attacked and savagely beaten by her own brother because his anti-non-Muslim prejudices made him unhappy about her choice of friends. This story will go down well in the right wing newspapers…

Yesterday I also touched on my mortgage problems. But I’m not the only one with money worries. Spare a thought for the poor boating fraternity. Back in the day, when multi-millionaires wanted a bigger luxury yacht it was easy to sell your smaller one to an up and coming wannabe millionaire. (Bear in mind here that a “smaller yacht” can comfortably accommodate more people than my house can!)

But nowadays up and coming wannabe millionaires aren’t so common, and those that can be found don’t seem to want yachts. So those who’ve upgraded to bigger yachts whilst fully expecting to sell their smaller ones have found themselves stuck with smaller yachts that they can’t sell. And because they can’t sell them, they are still liable for the ongoing running and mooring costs of said vessel. Running costs which can come to over a million quid each year.

It’s a tough life having more money than sense…

To work, which was hard work, and then home. Martin was waiting for me: not his idea. He’d bought a new bike (still boxed) and was carrying the box full of bike parts home. Heaven knows how I’d manage to lug the thing ten yards: he’d lugged it half a mile, and would have lugged it all the way to his house had “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ”  not caught him and insisted he waited for me to take the thing in my car.

With bike delivered we collected Sofia, then had a quick shopping trip. Totally by chance we again met Martin in town, and he persuaded us to pop into the Gorge for the all-day breakfast. We then did shopping, and I again couldn’t find anything at all in WH Smiths on which to squander my voucher. And then home, where I found another blog to add to my reading list. That’s now three of the family blogging.

And then we set off to Maidstone. The tribes gathered in the Druid’s Arms and after a quick pint of “Rockin Rudolph” ten of us made our way across the road to the Hazlitt theatre in Maidstone where the Stage Theatre Society were doing a stage performance of the Disney version of Aladdin. The oldest member of the cast was nineteen years old, and the show was wonderful. I was entranced for the entire time. I don’t go to the theatre anywhere near enough. Theatre is something else to add to my “must-do” list.

And at the risk of sounding like a penny-pinching old miser…. I bought a round of four drinks in the Druids Arms. I went halves on a round of five drinks at the theatre, so I know how much money was spent. For the cost of those six and a half pints of beer and two Malibu & coke I could brew five gallons of beer at home….