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Certainly wasn’t expecting to see a bird of prey in the city! Wish I had got a picture of it, but the visit only lasted a couple of seconds. It swooped in, sat down, looked around, and swooped back out again.

It was a larger-than-usual brown bird with piercing eyes and a small sharp beak. From looking around on t’internet I think it was a female sparrowhawk - here is a pic I stole from the BBC website…

Much more interesting than a pigeon!

Perhaps it is nesting in the graveyard next door? I’ll keep an eye out!

Mmmmm…. delicious apple and blackcurrant barley drink. Just dilute to taste. Best of all - NO artificial colours or flavourings and NO added sugar! Says so right there on the label. Great for tennis players, great for me, great for the toddler.

But hold on a second. What is all this on the back?

A big tick next to ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS! Yes, this baby is loaded! Aspartame AND Saccharin. On top of that Robinsons have given me a wide selection of artificial preservatives to savour too. Delicious for me, delicious for the toddler - NOT.

Just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover - or more accurately, a foodstuff by its marketing campaign.

Shame on you Britvic.

I’m a bit concerned that it might…

1. Food and fuel prices are sky high and there are no signs they will return to the levels of just 1 year ago.

2. Most of the UK’s economic growth in the past decade has been fuelled by easy borrowing on the never-never - and that bubble has pretty fundamentally burst. Unaffordable housing is only part of the debt disaster.

3. The UK does not make anything anymore - all we do is “add value” through services - but when nobody can afford the services any more how do we generate any money in the country? We can’t.

I am naturally a cynic but I do worry that this recession is going to hit us on a far more fundamental level than anyone had imagined possible. Will it be the trigger for the re-emergence of China as the worlds most important economy? Have we given them the key to economic success through our desperation to outsource all the dirty work? I think that maybe we have.