So. What are we doing now? Since, for the moment at least, despite a recent minor but important flurry of argument about certain aspects of the world banking system (which I don't think either of us exactly won, did we?) it seems we are nonetheless still alive. (What? Or are we not?)

One of her sisters
lives almost an hour's drive away - 
while the other is in Canada!

Actually, this journey can easily take over an hour -  well over an hour -  if the conditions are not quite right (and what is ever quite right in this bloody place?) -  but do I in any way need to be explicit about that? Would the admission itself not in fact take up too much time? (Certainly too much space. (Besides which, what does the quasi-avantgarde expositor ever really quite have to volunteer?)) And while it's no doubt highly admirable to respect other people's privacy, not to mention their private parts, might one not dare even so to be slightly more specific than just that bare 'Canada'? (Particularly since it should in something more like the truth be 'Australia'? (Oh God -  no, no, no, no, no! A mere defensive joke.)) I mean to say, to the best of our knowledge (oh, all right -  of her knowledge) (and please stop using italics quite so much) that same sister must be just one of the many actually existing figures moving about somewhere in Ontario at the present moment, must she not? -  (or is it, technically, ...