Spent the end of last week as an aching snot factory with extremely painful sinuses. Got well enough by Saturday to fight through Ikea for the last bits of stuff needed for the arrival of a whole family of people for Christmas. Sunday was spent folding up all the cardboard from that, and all historical visits to Ikea etc. in preparation for recycling. There is a neatly tied pile of flattened boxes approx 1m high that I expect the cat to savage by the time I get home.

Went for a walk in the fresh air afterwards and came upon an ice rink where kids were learning to skate with the aid of penguins with handles. One of the children, still young enough to be sucking a soother and not have the piss taken out of him, was plonked on the ice by his mother, his little hands barely reaching around the handles and told to wait while she dragged his slightly older sister around for a bit. From the expression on the kid's face, I think he was searching for the vocab to say What..The...Fuck.

The Golden Compass approaches - the film I have been most looking forward to since the LotR trilogy finished, though not with anything like the same intensity. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig look like being good casting choices. I guess it will be all down to how irritating the kid may or may not be. Hopefully the child-acting performance will be more Christina Ricci than Macauley Culkin.