Michelle Tant

Woolworths are set to relaunch online after being bought by the owners of the Daily Telegraph. Don't suppose that helps the 30,000 people who lost their jobs though.

There is 6 inches of snow outside my front door. Of course my Canadian friend thinks its hilarious that this is even significant to me, to us Brits in general in fact. She currently wouldn't dream of leaving the house without chains on her tyres. She told me that she had to walk with her kids to school because the school bus couldnt do its normal round as there had been 2 ft of snow over the weekend. In these parts, 6 inches of snow means the school isn't even OPEN, never mind the bus being able to get through. I remember as a kid practically counting on the extra few days per year holiday we would get because the boiler broke so the place couldnt be heated. I could never see the significance of THAT either. My school was so freaking cold normally irrespective of the boiler. This pic is of the fountain at our local garden centre, the wierdest thing about it was not so much that I had never seen a frozen fountain, and it really was amazing to look at, and of course,as you can se...

I was thinking about Barak Obamas first day at work. I wonder did he have the usual frustrations? Did the I.T. department get his log on and user ID to him in time, or did he have to twiddle his thumbs like the rest of us, not able to do a thing until that magic telephone call? Was he provided with a training plan? Did he have an induction session with a mindlessly boring jobsworth? Did they get his telephone extension number right the first time or did his wife end up speaking to the secretary of state when she dialed hubby's number? Was the caretaker parked in his 'spot' when he drove up that morning and was there a permit waiting for him at reception or did he have to claim a parking ticket back from human resources? Was the traditional office walk-round as excrutiating for him as the rest of us? People looking up from their desks as the new guy is paraded? Did someone forget to show him where to get his coffee at break? Or was the coffee machine inexplicably out of orde...