Well for the record today has been a moderately good day. Now well into Chapter 8 with plot thickening and noises off. One problem I have is that of the three murders so far, one is apparently a suicide but our hero suspects (with good reason) that it was actually a murder. Victim is found lying on back on floor with bullet hole in centre of forehead, gun lying nearby, and yes there are powder burns around entry wound. No suicide note (of course) and victim is suspected of two other murders. Two sets of prints on gun, victim's and that of one of the other victims.

The problem is how does one prove a negative, ie that the victim did not shoot himself? If he was shot from very close range the effects would surely be the same as if the victim himself held the gun? The one good thing, I suppose, is that the victim was a lawyer, so who cares how he died? People are very unkind to lawyers as a sub-species don't you think? Since one of the other victims is (or was) the wife of the aforesaid lawyer, and another her lover, I suppose its perfectly possible that a motive was to cut down on the divorce costs?

Whatever. We spent the early part of the evening making pumpkin lanterns for a party on Friday. What a curious custom and not my most favourite job disembowelling a large pumpkin. In the States of course, Halloween is always fun, but then you have your local pumpkin farms who do the dirty work for you I guess. Its the first time we have done pumpkins since the kids were small and I'd forgotten what fun it is.

Talking of revolvers and pumpkins I see the Conservative Party have just had a putsch and got rid of their democratically elected chief pumpkin, a painfully honest but hardly charismatic chap called Ian Duncan Smith. You can't help feel sorry for the poor guy, stabbed in the back by his fellow Conservative MPs just when the Blair Government is about to drop a whole load of bad news. Doubtless they will elect someone like "Touch of the Night" Michael Howard or the recently canonised, elegantly coiffured would be TV star, Michael (I'm half Spanish but I went to Oxford) Portaloo (sorry, Portillo). With a choice like that, is it any wonder nobody takes them seriously? Frankly they have totally lost the plot.

My daughter starts a new job tomorrow as CEO of an organisation in Edinburgh. She is of course brilliant (all daughters are), and at least half a lawyer. As a measure of how bad the traffic is in Edinburgh's capital city she has to allow three hours to drive what is no more than 50 miles to work. There are alternatives of course, trains for which you can't buy a season ticket, or a bus service from Perth which is fifteen miles away. While the Japanese are planning self-erecting super cities of 3/4 million people which don't have a car in them at all, the UK and Scotland have to cope with a 2-dimensional road network which is completely unsuitable for anything more sophisticated than a horse and cart economy, and not a very good one at that.

She could always, I suppose, ride one of my hobby horses to work?

In the meantime, its back to the plot. I knew I had one somewhere. Now then, where did it sneak off to?