Monday

Namibia - Herero woman, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Monday today and Fred has his half term. He is looking a lot better finally, the swelling around his upper jaw has gone down a lot, so he is looking orward to going outside for the first time in a few days. We will go for a walk with Henk into town. It is a nice enough day, a bit cloudy but dry.

I ate an awful lot of garlic last night and I think Fred will be happy to have me outside of the house... he has the windows open!

In the meantime, the letter I wrote to Somaliland Times, was published, so maybe it'll not be so easy to visit the country again until the government changes!

Otherwise, I am being bombarded with flyers and e-mails from Cheltenham racecourse, trying to encourage me to buy more tickets for the Festival next month. They are silly buggers because normally teh tickets would have sold out already in December. However, being very greedy and miscalculating th public's reaction, they decided 2-3 eyars ago to extend the festival to four days, making each day less exciting and watering down the quality of the races. And, whereas it was possible to stay for the whole three days of the old festival, four days is a bit too much. So, to compensate for lower attendances and maintain their income, they increased the prices a lot this year, with the result that they seem to be be having great difficulty in selling the tickets. I wrote to them last year suggesting very strongly that they go back to three days but was ignored. I have a ticket for the Gold Cup on the Friday, thinking about maybe going on the Tuesday (Champion Hurdle) or Wednesday (Queen Mother Champion Chase), as well, but i will avoid the dreadful mess which they have made of Thursday!