A busy week ...

Friday: Degas exhibition - so much more than ballet dancers: racehorses, portraits, nudes, sculpture.

It was comprehensive, fascinating, and exhausting. Saturday: voting at a primary school nearby - a long queue; no fete because of the school holidays, but they provided a sausage sizzle (including vegetarian sausages), cakes, coffee and ice-creams. But I wasn't impressed, while trying to batter the Senate paper into submission in a small stall, by the loud distracting gossiping nearby and the bright spark looking over his friend's (and my) shoulder while we were voting. A little more supervision would have been preferable!

Also went to an election night party; book group - of which more later; and several other outings.

Despite, or perhaps, because of this, this Friday came around very quickly. In fact, the year seems to be

disintegrating even faster than last year.

How does that happen? A year used to seem an almost unimaginable length of time when I was

playing in my sandpit - oh, that's why ...!