Country Life and Christmas Trees

The housefolks and I were having a lengthy debate about consumerism, materialism and how everybody seems to have overspent and the entire country has ended up in debt. As all four of us have consistently positive balances and pay off any credit card usage, we can't work out how the rest of the world has managed to cock it up so severely. My comment fairly summed it up - "Our country pride - people today seem to think it's margarine."

On a lighter point of extreme materialism, Christmas is on it's way! I love the gaudy festivity and especially my Christmas Tree. glittering green glass, pretty purple plastic and beautiful blue birds, brilliant butterflies and baubles with superb sparkly sequins! We were deeply

It's been an interesting week at work. On our closed training morning at a bigger branch, I was startled when one of our girls suddenly screamed. The manageress snatched up the bin and laughed - in the very bottom of the empty metal bin was a tiny terrified grey mouse! We let him out in the gardens, and wish the little rascal success.

The next day, my poor colleague was getting so upset at the risk of missing an important doctor's appointment, she shut the branch and turfed me out into the cold without a chance to get my coat. It was only once she had locked the front door that I realised she hadn't pegged the inner door - and it had locked me out.

I was frozen through, much to the cover staff's amusement, once she'd arrived. By this time I was in a black temper, and in my annoyance, I forgot to take the alarm remote out of my pocket - and got wedged tight in the coin chute. I have to laugh though, I ended up breaking the chute in the long run - it's had a dodgy lock that needed repairing for a couple of weeks, and I couldn't get the damn thing open on the other side and ended up knocking the handle off the inner lock.

Needless to say, as the whole operation is so difficult and time consuming, it would be completely impractical for someone to try it in an effort to rob the place, and no good to them without keys! But the spellchecker summed us up nicely in my letter to the repairs team. It didn't recognise the company name, and came up with this great description of the staff: "Newest Nattiest Neatest Nitwits".

I have just completed a major overhaul on Spyyk's page - http://www.spyyk.blogspot.com if anyone would care to have a look. I've updated the colours and layout, and also loaded up the last two years of questions from Axie keepers. I'd be interested in any feedback and improvement suggestions.

Question of the day: In the opening credits of "The Simpsons", what is Marge beeping her horn at?