As American ground-troops storm into Afghanistan, I suppose I could perhaps continue to comment on world affairs. But frankly, I can’t bothered, because it really now just seems like another world squabble that has no impact on me – see Kosovo, Somalia and East Timor for further examples. And you’re probably fed up with it all too: even Chris didn’t peruse my last rantings, because, as she said, “it had nothing about me in it”. Time to put the career as a world-renowned political commentator on the back burner for a bit.

Slightly worrying phone message this morning. A little while back, we registered girlswithguns.org, though so far, we’re still trying to accumulate a sufficient volume of appropriate material – such as the Anna Nicole Smith double-bill DVD (bought in an inebriated state, I have to say in mitigation). But picked up the following on the TC voice-mail today:

“Hi, I was calling about a domain name that’s listed to you, that’s called girlswithguns.org. We have a small women’s marksman’s group and we’re looking at doing a new website and we were wondering whether or not that name might be available. So please call me at ______. Just ask for Laurie.”

Certainly woke me up, and at least it made a change from people quibbling about non-delivery of beads. Politely-worded and very friendly though the request might have been, I remain very British in my attitude to guns, and my sole experience of them, outside of movies, remains a Valentine’s present of a session at a shooting range bought by my one true love [there, that’ll get me at least one reader this week!]. When someone who likes guns – enough to join a club for them – goes to the bother to find out your telephone number, you listen. And then probably cave in and give them whatever they want.

Actually, an amicable solution is not hard to find, since Chris fortunately had the foresight to also acquire girlswithguns.net. So we can probably transfer that one over – and then go back to hiding under the mattress, while girlswithguns.net launches an all-out assault on evil dodgy porn site, girlswithguns.com. We’ll buy up the movie rights to that one, though knowing our luck, it would probably end up starring Anna Nicole Smith.

Or perhaps Emily, our daughter, who is currently making a film in the hallway with her friend, our video-camera, and a bowl of food-coloured syrup. They are currently having to deal with the problems of low-budget film-making, e.g. the family dogs meandering across the “set” (a.k.a. said hallway), and the inevitable “Who’s going to turn the camera on since we’re both sleeping?” problem. Naturally, with Halloween only eleven days away, it’s a horror movie, though I’m wondering if we really should have taken her 13-year old self, to see prostitutes being viciously slaughtered in From Hell. Guess we’ll have to wait and see the finished product before deciding whether she is in need of psychological counselling…