I’ve just got back from my 1Km walk around the lake. I couldn’t do this six months ago. I was leaning on my stick, getting puffed. Now it’s easy. This is great!

I went to the stairs yesterday, by the way, while it was so stormy, and went halfway down, and up again of course, but it was so windy that I could hardly see. There was no beach – the waves were right up to the cliffs and the base of the stairs.

_____________________________________________

Because it was so wet and windy, we called the stone chips removal off. Another day. I spoke to next-doors and they weren’t fussed at losing them. Actually, they showed me the area they want to cover and I don’t think there would have been enough anyway.

_____________________________________________________

I’m reading Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life, all 969 pages of it. I’m only up to age 22 when he goes to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, but I’m hooked. He writes very well and has an amazing memory (or he’s making a lot of it up, probably).

The thing that strikes me is how much student politics there is in American schools, from the beginning of high school. “Class leader”, “School President”, all that sort of stuff. Maybe there is here now too, I wouldn’t know, but Clinton and his friends were campaigning and making speeches from an early age.

There were also so many prizes and awards within the high school – Merit Certificates and so on. America seems to instil a prize winning, claw your way to the top mentality from adolescence on.