Living the Woody Guthrie song "Dusty Old Dust"

There is a finite amount of plaster dust in the world and it is all in my house. The one room I have managed to keep reasonably dust free succumbed today. I surrender, give up, throw in the towel, no fight left. The dust wins.  My coffee tasted of plaster dust today.  Keep calm and carry on.

Shopping today at a big indoor shopping mall packed with pre-Christmas crazy folk.  Everyone seemed to be grabbing things off shelves in order to be able to tick boxes against peoples' names for presents.  I normally avoid these malls before Christmas, but it was an indoor escape from building work. Strange to be in such a place and have no need or desire to buy anything. It meant that I had time to watch people shopping. It reminded me of the time I went to Aruba with my dad and we went to the casino every night. My father loves to gamble - mostly blackjack, but also slot machines.  I, on the other hand, can't help but become more and more aware of how quickly large amounts of money are lost - there goes the rent, the phone bill, the car tax... This is not a good attitude to have when gambling, but it did mean that sometimes I could just stand back and watch the interaction of human and slot machine and money. Very interesting. The money is almost irrelevant. No one actually looks happy but they all look very intent. Unfortunately you can't photograph in a casino. This is supposedly because of opportunities for cheating. I think it's so you don't photograph how miserable most people look. Sort of like today''s shopping trip. Very intent and focused and glazed over so as to ignore others. Good times for pickpockets, I think.

No wisdom today. Nothing, nada. Empty. Cold too. Snow predicted for tonight and all of London on some sort of snow alert. Kids already hoping that schools will be shut, transport networks saying that London will function fine, and most people just hurrying home to get tucked in before the storm arrives. I figure we'll have a sprinkling of the white stuff and everyone and everything will go bananas. What climate change????

Tomorrow is Friday. One week till Christmas. The house looks like a bomb has gone off and all I do is bake cakes. Early in the morning and late at night I bake. Last night's  was super delicious tiny mince pies laced with cherry brandy. I ate too many to make it worthwhile to freeze them. I'll just have to make some more tomorrow.

If the dust doesn't get me, the pies will.