Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Early January weather courtesy the tropics. Warm rain on 8 January; it’s not natural. I shouldn’t be having these trials with the weather for about another six weeks. This time of year it is supposed to be deep winter: cold and dray or cold and wet. My only decision should be how much I wrap up and whether it needs to be waterproof. Instead I find that a trench coat is more than ample and possibly too warm.

On a completely different track, I have just had in my change a 2007 one pound coin (for some reason I think they are only issued late in the year so start cropping up in December and January). It has taken me a short search on google to work out what the design on the reverse is (for my overseas readers, the Royal Mint changes the reverse of a number of our coins annually or bi annually with a design to commemorate the flavour of the day). The 2007 pound coin has a very strange design on it.

Initially it looks rather like a bear trap, which seems rather odd in these politically correct can’t-swat-a-fly-because-it’s-cruel days. It turns out that it’s the Gateshead Millennium Bridge



Don’t be fooled by the picture, which shows the 2007 sterling silver proof one pound coin, they’re for collectors only. The workaday coins are made of squashed bottle tops or something similar.

The world’s most miserable tree has appeared in our office by the window. It’s a tree because it is indoors, outside it would be a sapling.

Now a healthy tree has a canopy that literally blocks out the sun. Even a young tree has a healthy covering of leaves if not as impressive a set as a mature specimen. This sad little thing has a single leaf for every foot of branch, and most of them are yellowy green rather than a good, rich green.

A little later when no one’s looking, I am going to give it a cup of coffee. That’ll perk it up.