The end is in sight!

There is a sort of delight of staying in bed until 9 am on a Friday morning, knowing that you have had a lie-in of two and a half hours!  It is a case of making the most of it until Monday when reality and getting up at 6.30 am hits.

I have used the holiday to finish off reading “The Ascent of Money” which is a book that has the pace of a novel rather than a dry academic economic textbook.  Well worth a read.

My copy of the BBC Music Magazine (which is as avidly read as my weekly copy of The Week) has prompted me to splash out on a new radio via Amazon thanks to an article in the magazine.  For a long time I have been looking for a portable Internet radio and failing to find one which is satisfactory.  The last attempt seemed to produce something that looked on the surface to be ideal, but when I tried it out it was a total failure.

 

I have now sent for a Pure One Flow radio and battery pack that should (should) make it fully portable and still give me access to my audio drug of choice, Radio 4.  From my experience the real problem comes when a radio maker tells you that “setting up is simplicity itself.”  I will reserve judgement until the machine arrives and then rely on the much-vaunted Amazon promise of easy return of goods that do not do what they should do!

Concern about something as trivial as an internet radio seems almost indecent when the BBC is broadcasting horrific pictures of the earthquake and tsunami which have hit Japan.

The force of the tsunami crumpling cars and houses in its path was startling and of course with the numbers of people who have cameras in their mobile phones we are given dramatic pictures of every stage of the disaster.  Admittedly the quality of the images is sometimes awful but there is a sense of immediacy that makes it difficult not to be moved by what is occurring.

After having read “The Ascent of Money” one also can’t help wondering what effect the disaster is going to have on the world financial situation.  As Japan is the third largest economy in the world anything that limits its normal business is going to have a knock-on effect on the whole of the financial system. 

Of course in the perverse way that our monetary system works this is going to be bonus time for a number of entrepreneurs including those in markets who make money when investments go down as well as up!

Whatever happens I hold out no lively hopes for a boost to my savings where every cough in the financial world seems to need my money to buy ever more expensive handkerchiefs!