The price of food is 9.3% higher than one year ago, bread is up 23% and milk is up 33%, electricity and gas bills have also risen by 12.3%. [RTÉ]

Further evidence of my increasing disconnect from reality: I had no idea  milk or bread had got more expensive - and I'm the one that does the food shopping.

I hear the Ennio Morricone music in the background, but I can't figure out which part of the movie we are in. If I remember, it goes all triumphal, then goes nearly quiet and low tempo, leaving us with a slow shot backing up from the dust of the flurry, dead people on the ground and a face with a smirk so cool that he doesn't even smirk...and we wonder how it is that one whom we don't identify with easily got to be the hero.

I shop too. Things are falling off my list of necessities week by week.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland