Ruby Red

Eitan is reading lengthy books, as he does here, while Madeleine shows us her ruby ring purchased the other day at the toy shop. We have their parents-teachers meeting this afternoon and will get some feedback on the Shakespeares progress into the new academic year. Eitan, we know, remains scared of his new authoritarian teacher Mrs. Cory ("you may only interrupt me in the event of fire, blood or vomit"). We like her. Otherwise it is Monday as usual, accepting the nationalisation of Britain's iconic banks HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB who have been bailed for £37 billion. Their share prices now in the pence. I own 'em.

Top-Ten reasons to trust the British bail-out:
1. Gordon Brown cracking jokes for the first time in his Prime Ministry
2. World's fourth biggest economy responding like a cutter
3. Sarkozy and Super Gee like each other: both dour pragmatists though the French distracted by Carla and who wouldn't be?
4. Battle scarred nation best when the chips are down
5. English football #1 in Group 6 : 5-1 trouncing of hapless Kazakhstan a moral booster we can take to the bank
6. New water pipes! London replacing the Victorian system all at once deconstipating the nation
7. £450 billion shot in the arm - who needs the jab?
8. David Cameron and the opposition party on board: "this a time for the British people and our government to come together"
9. Oxford and Cambridge
10. What, me worry?

"We must, in an uncertain and unstable world, be the rock of stability on which the British people can depend."
Gordon Brown