Call me conspiratorial if you will, but..
We sat down to enjoy Strictly Come Dancing Final last night, and a few things dawned upon us. For the past few weeks one particular contestant seems to be have been consistently marked a little higher by the judges than his dancing actually merited, this was most obviously the case in the Argentine Tango last week when he was, in our opinion the second best dancer, not the first. We also note that the judges words can be just as choreographed as the dancing and can be designed to lead the voting public. The editing of the programme can be used by the makers to install a subliminal view, for example in two films by supporters of each dancers, if the volume used by the maker was a little louder for one dancer than the other, that would have an effect on your interpretation. I could go on and on but wont, to us the whole thing smacked of manipulation and took the shine off it. For these reasons I would not vote.
My views on the final three contestants are :
Emma should have been in the final, but wasn't, possibly due to the above. Great shame.
Matt Dawson has come on the most, has improved the most, has danced the most entertainingly and fully deserved to be in the final. Lillya Kopilova (forgive spelling please) is just the most beautiful and talented partner and was perfect for Matt, there seemed real chemistry between them.
Mark Ramprakash has improved, his Latin dances were very good, but I think (despite the views above) that Karen Hardy won it for Mark. If you watch her performances, she really sells them, she manages to keep herself facing the judges and between her partner and the judges far more than Lillya did, (thus keeping the focus on the professional not amateur dancer) and she smiled and sang and danced with gusto and cheered the audience along - great, great tactics. I can see why, in addition to her great talent, she wins so much. Consumate professionalism.
I am not carping about the result, that would be churlish, I think Matt was the better celebrity and Karen the better professional, either couple therefore could be viewed as worthy winners.

It's been a longish day. We were off relatively early to Worcester (about 30 miles from home). We need to try a particular brand of mattress and that is where the enarest stockist is. Turned out to be a bit of a wasted - the mattress was nothing like as good as we had been led to believe. However, it gave us an opportunity to have a look around Worcester Shopping centre - seemed to have changed a lot since I was last there, but all in all quite enjoyable. Finished off feeding the seagulls by the river. We did try to feed the swans but the gulls caught the bread in mid air!Back in the car after a pleasant half day in Worcester, but my lord - doesn't the place suffer with traffic!

Worked some more on final editing for Gibraltar Rock - the new title for my new novel, hopefully out in time for Christmas. Had one major moment when I noticed that all the 'Daddy' words had changed to Long Levens. WHY? For goodness sake! For some completely inexplicable reason Word just seems to have taken it upon itself to do a search and replace. Thank goodness I noticed. Somehow:-

'Longlevens, can you pass me the baby powder' doesn't quite seem right!

Blood sugars seem okay today, but the old BP still too high. The meds for the sugars now seem to be working but the BP ones, even though they were upped yesterday, still don't seem to be bringing it down. Never mind!

Just watched Strictly Come Dancing - I think Brendan is setting himself up for a fall. We shall have to see how the public voting goes, but he annoyed me, and I'm public, and generally he is one of the pro's that I like.

Tinkering with the web page as the cats cower and hide from the bloody fireworks - God I HATE THEM!