I be liking local

When I went out at lunchtime today the sun was shining, the birds were singing, it was quite warm - I thought this feels like Spring. Are we living in the same country as all these folks with snow?

We did have snow on Saturday. It lasted about half an hour, was all of about a millimetre thick and then it turned to sleety stuff for about ten minutes. It was quite cold but then it warmed up. I don't know what the rest of the country is getting so worked up about.

Daughter got quite worked up this evening. Older son brought home a bike that friends of his had bought for their son from Toys****Us. It cost £250 and they had to put it together themselves. Which of course they couldn't do. So it was brought round for Daughter (that's right, the wannabe professional mountain biker) to fix it so it worked. Which she did, in as far as you can make crap work, but she then pointed out that they could have bought a far superior bike, from a named brand, for £30 less from the bike shop where she works, and it would have been delivered fully assembled and with a free service in a month's time. When will people learn that mass retailing is bad, and that local traders are good?

We have a new initiative in Brizzle today - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-16852326 - should be interesting. There's probably enough outside the box thinkers around here to make it work. Let's see.