The times, they are a-changing.

It's been a funny old year. Daughter is twelve today and the world is a different place to what it was the day she hit eleven.

New terms have entered the vocabulary; hopefully they will die away very soon because they are ugly, annoying and imprecise terms. Credit crunch is used to mean the fact that everyone's a bit poorer. The term staycation means not going away as soon as school breaks up and holidaying at home - hardly a novel concept except perhaps for the mega-rich. Food costs more. Vegetables don't cost a lot more yet but they will, because it's rained for the last eight weeks. Meat already costs more and we can all afford just a dribble of petrol because the price is rising at a rate which would be reasonable only in Zimbabwe. Power executives are giving themselves mammoth pay rises and bonuses (boni?) funded by 30% hikes in the bills of their customers. Nice work if you can get it - I wonder how you sleep at night.

No one is flying because the price of aviation fuel has increased so fast, so budget airlines are going under. We all holidayed in Britain this year and we were repaid for our forced patriotism with the biblical floods we all enjoyed all over Europe. A few thousand who gave up and went abroad for fear that their feet would rot in the wet got stranded when their carrier went bust.

Pubs are finding it hard to keep going, especially in the countryside. The smoking ban brought in in 2007 has made it tricky to keep that convivial manly smoky atmosphere that we all either loved, or which stopped us darkening the door of a pub. In addition supermarkets sell beer so cheaply that people are staying at home to get legless and smoke themselves to oblivion in the comfort of their own front room. And they don't need to worry about getting home.

Some eejit has decided that children in this country should be taught creationism alongside evolution. This suggestion in being treated with some seriousness because the eejit in question is a science professor of some ilk. Not a very eminent one, I would venture to assume.

I am being forced off the computer because Daughter wants to use the computer and is playing the birthday card. (No pun intended...) Suffice it to say that I don't think any of these changes are making life particularly better. Shame, because I think so much could be taken from our situation and used to community advantage. I'll bore you with that later.