We had a bit of late night yesterday, I know that’s not unusual at this time of year, but this was a bit unexpected. I was on my way home from playing football for the last time before the Xmas break, when I had a call from Orynthia. On her return home from seeing John, she picked up a message from a friend of my mum’s saying, that my mum had fallen over in town and was in hospital. We dashed into the hospital to see how mum was, this was at about 11:00, and mum was not looking too good and was convinced that she had broken a bone in her left arm. We had to wait around for several hours before the doctors had a chance to take a look at her. It emerged that she had dislocated her shoulder. They pumped her full of drugs and popped her shoulder back in. By the time that we had taken her home and then driven back it was gone 4am by the time we crawled into bed! Luckily for me I’m pretty quiet in work, so I was able to take today off. Orynthia made it into work this afternoon, but is exhausted now, so it’s time for an early night. Let’s hope that this is the last bit of misfortune to hit our friends and family this year. It has been a shocking year for lots of people that we know. My sister has had cancer, her eldest son has had a mental breakdown, and Orynthia’s dad has lost the use of his legs. Lots of our friends have had work related traumas. At times 2002 has been a pretty tough year, roll on 2003!

On Sunday evening we went to see the film Bowling for Columbine. I thought it was a pretty amazing film and really does make you think about the climate of fear that so many people live with. The worst thing is that very often, it is an unnecessary state of mind and the likelihood of suffering an attack of some sort is still pretty slim. However fear breeds more fear and pretty soon everyone is afraid to go out and experience real life. It was great to hear "Take the skinheads bowling" blasting out at the start and end of the film.