When the fella said he would try to come up to look at them I never really expected him to, but then he called on Monday afternoon and said they were on the way.

Not only that but they loved the bloody things and agreed a price, drove into town to get a deposit, then bought them. They’ll be back in a couple of weeks to pick them up.

When I was waiting for them I nipped across the road to a Chesterfield maker’s showroom and looked at some lovely leather sofas, there was even one in an amazing plush velvet. Purple of course. It looked fantastic.

I’m kinda of thinking back over the week today as I’ve been stuck in avoiding the rain all day. Even the dog seems distinctly pissed off and doesn’t want to do anything I ask her to.

Grim up north, just like they say.

It’s so easy to let it all become wallpaper and pay no attention, I wanted to get an understanding.

The Greek government has to reduce it’s spending by £3bn. So what on earth does that mean?

The numbers we hear so often just don’t mean a thing a lot of the time.

A million seconds is 277 hours, or 11.57 days.

So a billion seconds must be 11,570 days, which is 31 and a bit years. What does that tell me? Well, not much more than to help see just what a crazy huge number a billion is.

And the Greeks need to reduce their spending by that much, yet they have just borrowed a stupid amount to meet their next debt payment. What happens after that? And the banks who leant the money to them have had to write of vast quantities of the debt as well.

Oh, blimey. I almost wish I hadn’t started this. What this is bringing home to me is just how utterly messed up the Greek position has got. And I wonder would they have just carried on in the style they’d become accustomed to? Would it have taken a braver man than they had available to stand up and scream “NO!” this can’t go on?

Crazy, but you can just about see it happening, and it also helps you understand how the head of a family’s budget might get into crisis, getting so worried that he refuses to face up to the problem he has found himself in.

Well I just hope that the Eton boys have a good grip on what’s happening in this country. I’m sure we have a very rough ride ahead of us too.

Among various walks and trips to the pub I also took my nephew down the road to a place called Insitu, it’s an architectural antiques come junk shop kinda place in Manchester’s Castlefield Locks area.

I would love to buy a whole load of old stuff form places like this, but Mrs G is less keen. This time around though I think there are a few things I might just be able to slip in under the radar. There’s a huge sun burst mirror that’ll look great in our living room in Chorlton, and there’s a few sweet old children’s chairs, although I have no idea where they might go.

If I’m feeling brave I might just sneak down there one day this week and snap up the mirror. I also saw a couple of stained glass panels with bold red griffins in them that would suit the house of a couple of friends out in north Wales. They loved the photo I sent them and they’re threatening to come and see them later this week.

The trouble with these places is that they often charge just as much as the bloody things would cost you new. You just find yourself getting carried away by the atmosphere. You also need to be sure that the thing you’re so excited by will actually look any good in your own surroundings as opposed to in a shop with myriad wonderful objects. A hard consideration.

The parents are just keen to escape and they have already left for town and might not even pause to come home, more likely finding where they want to eat and getting us to join them there. It’s actually quite funny for us having the kids here as they’re both great fun and yet just annoying enough to dispel those pangs the childless have now and then about never having had kids.

Last night we all went down the road to West Didsbury for a few drinks and dinner in a place with great eastern style tapas, little bowls of dalls, curries, fried rice and similar things. Then back to Beech Road for more beers that we really didn’t need. All a bit quiet in the Glass household this morning as a consequence.

I’ll be mostly poking around the internet as Mrs G browses the Guardian, having moaned at the price of it for a few minutes.

I’ll dream of a few gadgets that I can’t live without, then proceed to forget them as fast as I got excited. Sounds like a good Saturday in the making.

I love the little pop. And most of the time she just cruises with me. Hops on the bus. Sits quietly in meetings. Or just stays at home. But every now and then you have to do stuff where the dog definitely can’t come along, either because it’s a formal office, or because I’ll be longer than I can expect her to stay quiet for.

That’s where Day Care For Dogs comes in.

She went last week for the first time for a bit of an induction, and then stayed on Thursday as I was going to be away all day.

And I reckon she absolutely loved it!

She came back exhausted having run around for the whole 10 hours she was there.

So we decided that it would be good for her to go regularly enough for it to be something to look forward to.

Today I have to go into town, and fancy getting the tram as it’s just so much quicker and more civilised than the bus and so I’ve dropped her off at Day Care again. She’ll be delighted.

It also means that she’ll be very little trouble tomorrow as it takes her a day to recover.

I’m a bit fed up of going to meet the guy I’m seeing though. There’s always the promise of work that never materialises. And always the expectation that I pick up the tab for his lunch. I probably only go because I actually like the chap a lot, and I’ll go buy some music in Fopp.

Apparently the case came to the attention of the BBC after they discovered that the lad’s name and address had been given by the police to THE GANG! And yet on the news this morning they described it as inadvertent. Surely this is utter lunacy?

It has wrecked the lives of the family as they have had to be given new identities, new homes, consequently needing new jobs, and will have to live a lie for the rest of their lives. And that’s aside from the horrendous expense. They have been given £550k in compensation and £50k costs, but that’s just scraping the surface I suspect. And what’s £550k worth against completely starting your life from scratch, and the fear that the situation is bound to create.

I lay fuming in bed listening to the story this morning. To me the worse part of the whole thing is that it wrecks people’s confidence and will make others even more reluctant to even admit to knowing anything let alone giving evidence in court against people they know to be dangerous, lawless and ruthless. It takes a strong person to stand up in front of someone and say they saw that person commit a crime, in the knowledge that the criminal may not be convicted, and even if they do go down, how long will they be locked up for?

In particular when you’re suffering from a hangover for the second day.

I got up at a normal ish time. Walked the dog. Then fell asleep on the sofa – my modern day equivalent of taking a nap in teh car at lunchtime as a kid.

I guess that now at least if I do need a sleep in the car it’s a much better experience than it used to be. And just today I put the back seats down in the Passat for the first time and realised that they go completely flat. I haven’t checked the length yet, but it did immediately make me start thinking that there’s a sleeping option available there. If it’s long enough then I could put an air bed in and get a comfortable snooze, perhaps on a long continental drive.

Actually I haven’t been rude about the Passat for a long time I’ve realised. That’s largely due to it behaving remarkably well. It does feel as if the rear shocks and shot, and it consequently corners like a sack of potatoes, it also grinds on full lock which doesn’t sound too good, and then there’s the poor fuel consumption. But that lot aside it actually is growing on me. Although today an old W123 Mercedes passed me in Black and I was full of envy. Slow, but oh so cool.

Phew. Tired again now. Can I take another nap?

We used to drink Jamiesons Whiskey to finish any night off. We smoked like idiots back then too, even set the flat on fire one night when a mate fell asleep with a fag in his hand.

I had a Morris 1000 which is a small car for a six foot two fella, but I used to love that little car. I’d curl up on the front seats at lunch time with a tape on and the noise of the tape flipping over at the end would be enough to wake me up. C90 tape, 45 minutes a side.

It was one of those nights last night. I’d used City Visitor again to find a printer in Birmingham and when it turned out we knew each other he insisted on coming north to take the brief from me. We talked business for an hour, then went into town ending up in the Black Dog Ballroom shooting pool.

Now I feel like I’m a hundred. And sixty.

And what sympathy do I get? For doing my work as I keep trying to point out…!

During the day yesterday Pi in Chorlton tweeted about a new beer they have on. La Trappe Quadruple. At 10% it sounded an interesting beast and I was keen to sample. We ambled up there fairly late on Saturday evening and tried one of these beasts, and it was a beauty – once we managed to get it open! It had a caged plastic cork that took a lot of leverage before it finally popped. The beer was wonderfully tasty and hid its kick well.

Around us people were eating pies and mash and mushy peas, and we wanted in.

Before long we’d ordered second beers, found a warmer table and got the pie request sorted. Chicken pie, mash, peas and gravy, to share, at just £7.95. What a winner and it was great. We’ve got some guests tonight and I’m thinking of taking them there too. Truly amazing beer, good food, and a long enough walk to make sure we don’t get into the habit of going too often. And interestingly although it’s only a mile or so from home, the crowd there was definitely different to the Beech Road bars.

On a cold and wet Manchester day what better thing to do, plan a trip to the pie shop for the evening?

But this isn’t about the wonder of the Minster. This is about pork pies. Instead of going to the pub we decided on the world’s best pork pie. What made it great? Amazing crusty and salty pasty, the right amount of quite runny jelly, and gorgeous moist meat. Amazing.

I was pretty darned hungry by the time I got back to Manchester and had to resort to an emergency Greggs which was far from satisfactory, but it did the job and didn’t detract from the pie.