the bandh plays on

The prime minister still won't give in, and neither will the maoists, despite the rain. Everyone's clearly getting fed up, so there's been a bit of argy-bargy around the valley, and a few areas are now under curfew (not us - but we're not likely to go anywhere anyway).

School off again tomorrow, so kids are happy, anticipating another day of mindless arsing about.

I'm planning to escape to the hairdresser tomorrow afternoon. It'll be a bit cloak-and-dagger because of course she's not supposed to be open, but I'm going to phone her when I'm there and she will open the door a crack, just wide enough for me to slide covertly inside and scurry up the stairs for my strike-breaking highlights.

At the moment I look like Robert Smith on a bad hair day, so it will be well worth the effort in time for the BGN pool party tomorrow night. It's a barbeque (might be tempted to sneak a few burgers into my handbag so that we don't run out of food over the weekend, or just to lace with poison and feed to the yappy dog next door - although I think someone might have beaten us to it as it was earily quiet last night. I did in fact wake up and mention to Hubby that it was 'eerily quiet' at two in the morning, which he wasn't very happy about, as me mentioning it woke him up and then he couldn't get back to sleep without the soothing backdrop of howling dogs, hymn-singing and mouth-organ music that is the norm for Kathmandu at night).

Anyway, the good news is that I'm going to stay 39 a bit longer. Hubby has to be in Pokhara for my birthday, so we have decided to postpone it until the next day (or risk tantrums and petulance at him prioritising work over my very important birthday). But this is a good thing as it means I have an extra day of being in my thirties!

Hopefully the bandh will be over by then and we can go out somewhere for the night. If it's not, then our celebration might just be getting hold of some black-market buff mince and making a nice spaghetti whilst listening to the sounds of police batons holding back the marauding hordes.

Oooh, and I'm getting a big, black ring. Do you remember watching Crimewatch in 1990? Of course you do! Do you remember it was presented by Sue and Nick, and Sue had a really nice big onyx ring? Yes, you do! Well I have coveted that ring for the past twenty years, and I finally persuaded Hubby to get one made for me. And guess what? It's only going to cost about eight quid as well (at that price I might persuade him to cough up for the matching bracelet). Good eh?

Deary me, it's a bit sad, that getting a black ring is the fulfillment of my ambitions as a twenty year old. Other twenty year olds want to be famous, or become prime minister, but no, all I ever wanted was Sue-from-Crimewatch's ring. And what's even sadder is that it has taken a whole twenty years to achieve that ambition.

Oh, I suppose there were a few other things I wanted to do, like travel, get married, have kids and a dog, run a marathon, get published in national press (fab, can tick those off), become a published author (oh, just leave it, I'm going to cry), become an MP (what kind of deluded self-image did I have?), make a patchwork quilt (why?), and have a size eight bottom (yes, well, some things are just never ever going to happen, and a sign of maturity is to accept them).

Hubby is sitting across the very big sitting room on the other sofa doing important work things on his laptop. I'm half tempted to attempt a cheery conversation with him, but the look on his face tells me that this will be futile, so I'm afraid I'm blathering on to you instead, because I'm quite sure you aren't working on customer service documents and team-building plans. Or maybe you are? In which case why are you wasting your time reading this drivel? Get back to work, you slacker!