Tough week

I lost my nerve after feeling that after working like a Dervish for 4 months all I have done is kept us financially in the same place. Without it we would have lost everything, but after it we are still only a couple of months from the wolf knocking on the door.
This has led to panic attacks and an inability to focus and concentrate.
Meanwhile the bills are appearing at horrible frequency -the breadcrumbs birthday party, breadcrumbs sports camps, the Purple People Carrier having one of those months all cars have.
So far it is a new tyre, 2 new windscreen wipers, 2 windscreen washer nozzles (thanks to the baboons at Knowsley), petrol and coming up soon a big service with a change of timing belt. Ouch.

But the long term worrying thing is that the littlest breadcrumb may be suffering from glaucoma. Which means that she will be in treatment for the rest of her life, and has risk of damaged or lost sight.

The treak is to keep breathing, is a great novel by Janice Galloway. And the only advice possible.

This week's hotel room - Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury

And jolly nice it is too. Room is pretty spacious by London standards and quite comfortable. Food is good. No doubt it is staggeringly expensive, but I am not paying so I don't know. The best thing about it is that is about 20m from the British museum on Great Russell Street. This makes it easy to just slip over the road and amble round. Yesterday was the Minoan rooms, which followed on a recent In our Time on Minoan culture. Also got to see more of the "history of the world in 100 objects" - the very first was a hand axe that is 1.5 million years old. 1.5million. Wow. Difficult to think that at that time there even were humans.

Crash of the Elysium

Great fun. The twins were alternately terrified and engaged for an hour. Surprisingly there were no merchandise opportunities - we would have shopped!

Manchester International Festival in Salford Quays - if your have kids aged between 8 and 12 you have to take them

The next day's room

The Wednesday night brought a rather different room - effectively a student room. In fact I thought it was as student campus, but it turned out to be a NUS training camp.

This was Yarnfield Training and Conference Centre, which is the former GPO and BT training centre. A Massive complex - very much like a student hall of residence. It seems so large that bits of it are now getting run down through disuse.

A little bit of a blast from the past.

Last week' hotel room Tuesday 27th

The Marriott Victoria and Albert in Manchester. Jolly nice. I really do like Marriotts. In fact I think I would like to live in one.

Internet was not free which is an irritation - do hotels not realise that this just causes aggrovation with guests?

Food and drink good and not especially expensive for a hotel